


Split Soul

by Astroblaze



Category: Danny Phantom, Gravity Falls, Undertale
Genre: (With complications), Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Gen, It's Vlad's fault, Major Original Character(s), Minor Violence, No Frisk, Sequel, Undertale Pacifist Route, bill ruins everything
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-10 14:04:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6960055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astroblaze/pseuds/Astroblaze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In another attempt to be rid of the annoying ghost-girl forever, Vlad throws Eve down a giant hole through a mountain from which no one has ever returned. When she hits the bottom, Eve finds herself in a strange underground network of cities unlike any she'd ever seen before. Stripped of her powers, if only for a time, she must find a way through them and escape intact. But what will happen when she finds that the monsters that live in the Underground aren't as terrible as they first seem? And will the half-ghost castaway even want to return to the surface?</p><p>---------------</p><p>Undertale belongs to Toby Fox.<br/>Danny Phantom belongs to Butch Hartman.<br/>Bill Cipher, and the rest of Gravity Falls, belong to Alex Hirsch.<br/>Therefore, I only own Eve Rowley and the plotline of the story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> After some consideration, I've decided to put my Undertale/Danny Phantom crossover on AO3. This is the first story I've written on this website, so I'm still figuring out the format. Please excuse any mistakes I end up making.  
> Notice: due to my busy schedule, I often have little time or writing energy for updates, which means I update incredibly slowly. Thanks in advance for your patience ^^" I promise the end results will be worth your wait.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we learn how Eve got into the Underground in the first place.

Ether thrashed around in Vlad Plasmius's grip, but couldn't dislodge his gloved hand from her neck. The rocky mountainside whipped past beneath the two halfas as the teal-skinned, white-suited ghost continued upward, undeterred.  
"Let me go, Vlad!" she shouted angrily.  
"I've been doing my research, Ether," Vlad declared, ignoring her demand. "Apparently, people who come up this mountain never return."  
Ether stopped struggling, intrigued despite herself.  
"What? Why not?"  
Plasmius bared his vampiric fangs at her, his red eyes narrowing.  
"That's what I brought you here for."  
Looking ahead to something that Ether couldn't spot due to the way she was turned, he exclaimed, "Ah! Here we are."  
Ether began squirming again, trying to glimpse what he was looking at. Plasmius sneered at her again.  
"Oh, don't worry, girl, you'll see what it is soon enough."  
Ether stopped and hung limp, but this time in silent dread of what Vlad had planned. She kept on a brave and defiant expression, however - there was no way she'd ever let Vlad know she was worried.  
Stopping in midair, Vlad cast the half-ghost teen one final sneer before spinning her around to reveal the giant hole in the ground right ahead of them, dropping downward into darkness. Ether let out an involuntary gasp, stiffening.  
"Scared, girl?" Vlad questioned smugly.  
Composing herself, Ether glared back at him and spat, "You wish, fruit-loop."  
"Well, you should be," Vlad declared, removing a familiar two-pronged device from under his cape. Activating the Plasmius Maximus with a crackle of electricity, he jabbed it into Ether's side, making her cry out in pain as it mercilessly shocked her. Losing her grip on her ghost half, she reverted to her human half, Eve. With a startled squeak, she mentally scrambled for her ghostly energy, but it seemed like an impassable barrier stood in her way.  
"Because that's where you're going!" Vlad finished his previous statement with a triumphant shout, hurling Eve into the yawning mouth in the ground. With a loud outcry, she plummeted into darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chappie :P Don't worry, the others will be significantly longer.


	2. Chapter One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Eve is given shelter by a goat and threatens a flower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took longer to finish than I expected... Sorry about that...

Eve plummeted into the abyss. Voluntary no longer, her cry was pulled from her by the force of the wind that rushed around her, tugging at her auburn bangs, long ponytail, and the edges of her purple plaid jacket.  
But then, just when she thought that she would keep dropping forever, her back met a hard but strangely puffy surface, forcefully thrusting all of the wind out of her in one breath. She went limp, limbs dropping to the ground and sending more pollen into the air from the patch of golden flowers she'd landed in. The air was thick with their sweet, sharp scent.  
When she regained her breath, she released a weak groan and slowly opened her vibrant blue eyes to a dark, rocky ceiling high above her, broken only by the little pinpoint of light from the chasm she'd fallen from.  
_'I fell all the way from there?'_ she questioned when she'd gathered her thoughts enough to realize. _'How did I not break anything?'_  
Eventually she gathered enough strength to push herself to her feet and she rubbed her tingling side where the Plasmius Maximus had shocked her as she surveyed her surroundings. The patch of golden flowers that she'd landed on sat in the only patch of light in the entire large cavern, and Eve guessed that only her enhanced sight enabled her to spot the walls that curved around her, craggy shadows in the purple-tinted dusk.  
Looking around, she spotted a near-black gap in the rock surrounding her. Hopeful, she walked through it and down a dark hall until she reached its end. To her left, a rectangular arch made by two pillars with another laid over them stood tall. Spotting light through it, she turned and kept walking until she found herself in another cavern, similar to the previous, but where the other had a patch of golden flowers, this one had only a single, large one with a smiling face on its white center. Eve's eyebrow rose at the sight of it, but she shrugged and walked on with the intention of passing it.  
But then, when she neared it, the flower opened its mouth and spoke.  
"Howdy!"  
Jerking to a halt, Eve stared at the flower, which had turned its small black eyes on her with a cheerful grin.  
"I'm Flowey, Flowey the flower!" the flower declared.  
"I'm Eve..." the halfa responded hesitantly.  
Flowey tilted its 'head', its petals waving slightly in the movement.  
"You're new to the Underground, aren't 'cha?" it - he, Eve realized - noted. "Golly, you must be so lost and confused!"  
Eve nodded, beginning to like the cheerful flower.  
"Don't worry," Flowey assured her with a wink, "I'll help you!"  
Eve started in surprise when a glowing heart, half-red and half-icy blue with a neon green line down the middle dividing the two halves, floated out from her chest.  
"See that heart?" Flowey questioned, even though it'd be hard to miss the little glowing shape. "That's your Soul, the very culmination of your being!"  
He tilted his 'head' again, this time looking confused.  
"Huh, that's weird."  
"What?" Eve questioned.  
"Well, humans have red Souls and monsters have blue Souls, but you've got one that's both."  
"Oh." Eve looked down at the split-color heart, now realizing why it looked that way.  
Flowey made a motion with his two almond-shaped leaves that made it look like he was shrugging.  
"Oh well. It's not important. What is important is that you learn how to use it. You see," he continued, "your Soul gets stronger if you gain a lot of Love. You want Love, don't you?"  
"I guess I do," Eve agreed.  
"Don't worry, I'll share some with you!" Flowey assured her with a playful wink as a bunch of white pellets like oversized grains of rice popped into the air from underneath his bud.  
"Down here, Love is shared through..." he hesitated, "little white... 'friendliness pellets'!"  
Eve raised an eyebrow as she stared at the pellets.  
"Huh. Weird."  
"Alright, move around, get as many as you can!" Flowey instructed her as the pellets began flying toward her.  
Eve crouched slightly, prepared to catch the white pellets. Just then, she glanced up at Flowey and something about his expression set off alarm-bells in her head. She moved to step out of the way, but the pellets zipped forward before she could and bombarded her like tiny bullets, pulling an agonized outcry from her lips. She stumbled backward and lost her balance, sitting down on the ground with a bump as she clutched at her chest, jaw clenched and one eye squeezed shut in pain. When she looked up, she discovered that Flowey's grin had turned malicious and his innocent, friendly face had changed to something much more vile in appearance.  
"You idiot," he rasped. "In this world, it's kill or be killed."  
"Wha-" Eve gasped, her confusion turning to anger. "You little- you tricked me!"  
Flowey laughed, a sharp, grating sound that wore on Eve's ears.  
"Why would anyone bypass an opportunity like this?"  
Eve jerked back with a gasp as a ring of 'friendliness pellets' formed around her.  
**"DIE,"** Flowey cackled as the pellets crept closer.  
Jaw clenched, Eve's head whipped around in search of a way to escape as the bullets drew closer, deliberately inching toward the fatally weakened, quivering Soul that she hid behind her hand. She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping beyond hope that she could withstand the incoming blow.  
She waited.  
The blow didn't come.  
She cracked open one eye, to find the ring of pellets gone and Flowey looking rather confused. Suddenly, a flaming red-orange bullet shot from the shadows, sending him flying into the darkness opposite. Her eyes automatically followed the stunned, bug-eyed flower, then flicked back as a ladylike creature easily a head taller than Eve herself walked out of the shadows from the opposite side. Covered head to toe in soft white fur, she had a goat-like head, with its drooping ears, crimson eyes with horizontal pupils, and short, rounded muzzle, but the large paws that formed her feet seemed more like the hindpaws of a rabbit in shape. Beside her overall body-shape, her hands seemed the most human, with three large fingers on each hand tipped with trimmed, canine claws for nails. Her soft purple dress, accented with white sleeves and a white pattern like a winged orb over a trio of triangles, flowed around her ankles as she walked.  
"What a terrible creature, torturing a poor, innocent youth," she sighed. She smiled gently and kindly at Eve, revealing a set of small fangs. "Oh, do not worry, young one. I am Toriel, keeper of the Ruins. I regularly come through here, looking for humans who have fallen. And here you are," she added cheerfully, walking to Eve and offering her a hand easily twice the size of Eve's own.  
With a grateful smile, Eve accepted Toriel's helping hand, getting to her feet. The moment she touched the soft fur, a soothing warmth flowed through her entire body, dispelling her pain as it spread.  
Glancing down where her Soul had been, she was startled and confused to find that it had vanished. However, as she wondered where it had gone, it reappeared, glowing brightly in red and ice-blue and gently pulsing. Mystified, she released the mental grip on it that she only now realized she'd been holding and her Soul disappeared again. She suspected that she'd learn more later about the strange way her Soul was acting. Just then, she realized that Toriel was speaking again.  
"Come with me, I shall guide you through the Ruins," Toriel beckoned her kindly and the two of them walked down a dark hall and through another arch identical to the first one.  
On the other side of the arch, Eve found herself in a wide hall in soft, soothing shades of lavendar and white, with brick pillars accenting the walls and crimson leaves scattered around the hall, in places framing the light lavendar path that led to the stairs. At the back of the hall, two sets of stairs curved around a pile of the same crimson leaves to a ledge which held another arching entrance. Following Toriel, Eve walked up one flight of stairs and through the intricate white entrance.  
The two entered small room with six stone buttons on the floor nearby in rows of ones and twos, and a closed door in the other wall that appeared to be locked. The air smelled of dust, autumn leaves, and enclosed spaces.  
"Welcome to your new home, my child," Toriel welcomed the slender teen, her tone light and happy. "Allow me to educate you on the workings of the Ruins."  
Releasing Eve's hand, she walked over the two rows of two buttons, then pressed a button beside the door and the door slid open with a smooth scraping of stone against stone.  
"The Ruins are full of puzzles, an ancient fusion of diversions and doorkeys," Toriel explained, turning back to Eve, who remained where the soft-spoken goat-woman had left her. "One must solve them to move between rooms. Please adjust yourself to the sight of them."  
Eve followed her into the next room, which proved to be a long hall with a wooden bridge over a wide, deep river at about the center; the exit from the room, which she could barely glmpse from where she stood, was blocked by a row of tall, intimidating spikes.  
"For this puzzle, you must flip the correct switches to deactivate the spikes at the end of the hall and proceed to the following room," Toriel explained, then added comfortingly, "Do not worry, my child, I have marked the correct ones."  
With that, she walked to the bridge, where she turned and waited for Eve. Looking around, the teen located the first switch on the opposite wall, which was additionally indicated by several bright yellow arrows. She walked to the switch and flipped it. Turning, Toriel walked on to the exit with Eve right behind her. To its left, there were two switches on the wall; the left one was surrounded by arrows, and even had a path leading to it, while the other was entirely blank. Struck with the distinct sense that the puzzles were too easy, Eve casually flipped the marked switch, which triggered some sort of mechanism, as made evident by the heavy clank that followed immediately after. Turning, she discovered that the spikes behind Toriel had vanished.  
"Excellent!" Toriel applauded her. "I am proud of you, little one."  
Eve smirked to herself.  
_'"Little one"? I'm fifteen.'_  
When she looked up again from her amused consideration, she discovered that her self-proclaimed guide had moved on to the next room, and scrambled to catch up.  
In the following room, Eve found Toriel standing beside a long-muzzled dummy with buttons for eyes and a worn, rucksack-like exterior that implied that it had been sitting there for many years.  
"Being that you are a human in the Underground, monsters will attack you," Toriel explained. "When this happens, strike up a conversation. Stall for time and I will come and resolve the conflict. You must be prepared for this occurence - I expect it to be a common one - so practice by talking to this dummy."  
One eyebrow raised, Eve glanced to the long-muzzled mannequin, then back to Toriel, who waited patiently.  
"Go on, my child, don't be shy," Toriel encouraged her.  
Awkwardly stepping to the dummy, Eve started in surprise when her glowing, pulsing soul reappeared.  
_'It must only do that when I get in a fight down here,'_ she realized.  
Looking back to the dummy, Eve greeted it with an uncertain, "Um, hi, how're you doing…?"  
She glanced back to Toriel.  
"It feels really weird to talk to something that's not alive."  
"Please do it anyway," Toriel insisted. "I want you to have practice doing this."  
_'Well, until my powers return, this is the best backup-plan I've got,'_ Eve mused, turning back to the dummy. While she pretended to engage the stuffed monster in meaningless small-talk, she let her mind wander to more important matters until Toriel's voice broke her out of her reverie.  
"Very good, my child!" the goat-like monster congratulated her. "You're a natural at this."  
Lost in her thoughts, it took Eve a moment to process the fact the Toriel had spoken, but then she turned back to the motherly humanoid with a confident grin.  
"Yep, you've got nothing to worry about, Ms. Toriel."  
The humanoid beamed.  
"I am quite happy to see that you are a confident child. Anyway," she continued, "follow me into the next room."  
When she followed the goat-lady through the next door, Eve found herself in a long hall with a winding lavendar path to the other end.  
"This next puzzle is a bit trickier," Toriel mentioned hesitantly.  
With a confident grin, Eve rose her hand.  
"Don't worry, Ms. Toriel, I've got this."  
"Alright," the gentle monster murmured hesitantly, clasping her clawed hands together.  
Toriel following a little ways behind, Eve strode deliberately down the corridor, examining every inch of the walls, floor, and ceiling for hidden buttons or switches. For all intents and purposes, however, it appeared to be a regular hall with a weirdly winding path through it.  
_'The path must be part of the puzzle,'_ Eve deduced. Upon reaching the end of the corridor, she continued into a short, winding hall and noticed a stone plaque on the wall.  
'The western room is the eastern room's blueprint.'  
"A-ha," she muttered with a triumphant grin. Quickly turning back, she returned to the previous corridor and committed the path to memory before continuing to the next room. When she entered it, she stopped, staring apprehensively at the spike-covered bridge over the who-knew-how-deep moat.  
"Spikes are a popular theme here," she hesitantly commented to Toriel, who had walked up beside her.  
"Do you want me to walk you through this puzzle?" Toriel asked in concern.  
"No! No, I got it," Eve denied hastily. "I'm just... a little disconcerted by all the things that could hurt if I touched them."  
With the motherly monster anxiously following close behind her, Eve cautiously approached the spike-covored bridge, keeping the previous room's path in mind.  
"So, if that plaque is to be believed," she murmured to herself, "then something's going to happen if I approach the spikes from right… here."  
Following the curve of the previous path, she approached the spikes from the right-hand corner and they dropped into the bridge with a clunk when she was a step away from colliding with them. Her confidence returning with this assurance, she boldly wound her way across the entire bridge, the spikes receding before her and popping back up once she'd cleared them.  
"You are indeed a very confident child, aren't you?" Toriel questioned when she caught up with the half-ghost teen at the end of the bridge. "Well, that is good, I suppose…" She sighed softly. "You see, I must attend to some things at home and I'll need you to remain by yourself for a little while, as much as I hate to leave you alone." She brightened. "However, you are by far the oldest child I've cared for so far, and the most confident. After watching you solve this last puzzle all by yourself with ease, I do believe you're capable of making your way through the Ruins without my help."  
Seeming to remember something, she pulled a small gray cellphone out of a hidden hip pocket in her dress.  
"Here," she continued, giving Eve the cellphone. "I'll meet you back at the house, but if you need me before that, just call."  
With a thankful smile, Eve accepted the device and slipped it into her jacket's pocket.  
"Take care, and be good, alright?" Toriel reminded her with a gentle smile. Eve nodded in agreement and the goat-woman turned and walked down the long hall that followed the bridge, eventually disappearing behind a white pillar far in the distance.  
Her hands in her pockets, Eve walked down the hall, which like the rest of the Ruins was purple with worn, cracked brick walls, a lavendar path along the floor, and dark green vines creeping up the walls in wide patches of leafy growth. The air was cool, still, and slightly musty, with faint dust motes drifting through the air. As she walked, Eve mentally reached for her icy ghost-core, but found it still obstructed by a mysterious, unbreakable force. Stubbornly, she kept trying, but when she'd reached the end of the ridiculously long hall without making any progress on regaining her powers, she gave up, deciding to let them return on their own time, as inconvenient as it was.  
Observing with dettached interest the door hidden behind the pillar as she passed, Eve continued into the next hall, which made a T-formation with the one she'd just walked out of. The lavendar path continued down to the right, sloping downhill ever-so-slightly before turning into the next room. Piles of crimson leaves rested in various places around the hall, a few of them drifting across the path but most staying in one place.  
Just then, a small, gravelly voice from her left caught her attention.  
"Excuse me, human."  
Turning toward the voice, Eve found a small, white froglike creature watching her with large, bulbous eyes, the white pattern on its black stomach swaying hypnotically with its rocking motions.  
"I have some advice for you about fighting monsters," the monster continued, its voice similar to the croaking of a frog. "If you act a certain way or fight until you almost defeat them, most monsters won't want to fight anymore. If they don't, please, show some mercy, human."  
"I will," Eve agreed, "thank you, Mr. Frog."  
"Froggit," the creature corrected her. "My kind are called Froggits."  
"I'll keep that in mind," the teen agreed.  
With a wave of farewell to the Froggit, she continued on her way.  
Looking to the left, Eve noticed a pillared arch leading into a room - she could glimpse water through the rectangular entrance. Curious, she walked through it and found herself in a small, cubic room, with a wide moat running along every wall and a stone structure jutting out into the middle of the room. At the end of the stone structure, a white pedestal stood in a thin ring of crimson leaves, holding a bowl filled near-overflowing with small pieces of candy in vibrant rainbow-hued wrappers. Wary in case of the bowl being bait for a trap, Eve sidestepped cautiously toward the bowl, hesitantly reaching out and plucking a few pieces from it. Deliberately pocketing the candy, she tensed up, ready to bolt out of the room if she needed to.  
Nothing happened.  
Cautiously hesitant, she eased back onto her heels, realizing then that she'd instinctively risen onto the balls of her feet in preparation.  
Still, nothing happened.  
Finally, the teen fully relaxed with a relieved sigh. It hadn't been a trap. Some nice monster had just put out a bowl of candy for passersby.  
_"I wonder who that could've been,"_ she sarcastically mused with a smile, immediately thinking of Toriel.  
Leaving the room, she headed down the leaf-strewn path and turned into the next room, which turned out to be little more than a short, wide hallway with a space in the middle where the floor was darker and strangely textured. On either side of the section of floor, two white-edged slots were set into the left-hand wall - when she passed the first, the air-current gusting from it blew at her ponytail and bangs, bringing her to the assumption that it was a type of vent. Her eyebrow rose in curiosity, her vibrant blue eyes flicking back and forth as she tried to determine what was special about this strange new kind of floor . Dropping to a squat, she pressed one hand to it, testing its strength and finding it no different from any other part of the floor, despite having a texture like dry wood. Rising to her feet, she stepped out confidently, trusting the floor to hold her.  
It broke under her weight.  
With a startled shriek, Eve dropped into a room below, landing flat on her back with an 'oof!' on a bed of the same crimson leaves she'd so often seen around.  
"I seem to be doing a lot of falling today," she muttered irritably, rolling over and stiffly getting to her feet.  
At that moment, she noticed the Froggit sitting less than a foot from where she'd landed, glaring vindicatively at her. She'd almost landed on top of him.  
"Sorry about that, Froggit," the teen apologized. "I wasn't expecting to fall, either."  
With a huffy ribbit, the Froggit hopped away.  
Looking to her left, she found two white-edged doorways sitting in the wall on either side of the leafbed, tiehr interiors black with deep, concealing shadows. Her sharp hearing caught the rush of a violent updraft flowing behind the entrances, reminding her of the vents she'd walked past on the level above. Warily, she stepped inside the right-hand doorway and found herself blown upward with breathtaking force. She shot out of the slot on the level above, the sudden light catching her off-guard and momentarily stunning her, which resulted in her being completely unprepared when the updraft threw her across the hall, slamming headfirst against the opposite wall. She dropped awkwardly to the floor, where she sat for a moment, rubbing the back of her head in a stunned daze.  
"I'd rather not do that again," she groaned to herself when she regained the presence of mind.  
Fortunately, when she looked around she found that she had come out on the opposite side of the fragile dark ground. A little worse for wear, she continued into the next room, where she found an ash-gray rock sitting on a wide, dark line in the middle of the floor, with a gray pressure plate at the other end of the line. Across the middle of the room, a line of needle-sharp spikes barred her way. Quickly connecting the dots, Eve strode to the boulder and pushed it along the line and onto the plate with ease, finding that it slid smoothly along the line with little effort on her part. With a heavy clunk, the gleaming spikes dropped into the ground and she continued across the room into a narrow hall.  
When the hall emerged into the next room, Eve stopped, surveying the new room with a sense of trepidation. She laughed wryly.  
"Well, shoot. So much for never wanting to deal with this again."  
She stood on a sort of ledge with the same white-edged vent as before to her left, but to her right, the room opened up to the same dark, strangely textured floor as she'd found in the hall. Her brow furrowed, she looked around for any way around the fragile floor, but if she didn't try to cross it, she'd effectively reached a dead-end.  
With a heavy sigh, she stepped forward onto the dark floor, grinning mirthlessly to herself as it predictably broke beneath her feet. This time, however, since she was prepared to fall, she was able to transfer the energy of impact into a forward roll, unfolding to crouch with her hands spread in front of her to regain her balance. Standing and looking around the new room she'd fallen into, she found that most of the rough stone floor was covered in crimson leaves, which rustled pleasantly underfoot as she made her way out of them and onto the narrow, zigzagging path that cut through the leafbed. On the wall at the end of the narrow path, she spotted an ash-gray stone plaque and approached it out of curiosity, reading its inscription when she was close enough.  
'Please don't step on the leaves.'  
Remembering what she'd fallen on and noting that the leafbed only spread under the dark floor, Eve quickly deduced the plaque's meaning - if she stayed above the path, the floor wouldn't break beneath her. She glanced upward. Now she just had to get back up there.  
Glimpsing a black rectangle in the corner of her eye, she peeked around the corner and found a white-framed doorway identical to the previous two sitting in the far wall. As she approached it, her sharp hearing caught the rush of a violent updraft flowing behind the entrance, once again identical to the previous two.  
_'Now if I don't want to be slammed against the wall again, I need a plan,'_ she mused to herself.  
Considering the configuration of the doorways and vents, she got an idea. Steeling herself, she stepped through the doorway and found herself once again rocketing upward through a dark pipe on powerful gusts of stale, mildly warm air. She shot out of the slot on the level above, but this time she was prepared and latched onto the upper lip of the wide vent, swinging upward out of the pipe before releasing her grip and dropping to the floor in a crouch, the wind still strong enough to tug at her bangs despite being weakened by its spread.  
"Huh," the teen observed to herself as she rose to her feet and strode back to the edge of the darker floor. "Once I was ready for it, that was actually kind of fun."  
Taking advantage of the large hole where she'd broken through, she got down on her hands and knees and peered through to the lower level, reminding herself of the path's zigzagging route before straightening and attempting to cross the dark floor again.  
Following the path on the level underneath, she carefully traversed the strange floor. She accidentally overstepped a few times, but each time was able to jerk back onto the correct path as the forbidden floor crumbled away under her feet. As she stepped onto the solid, lighter floor of the far hall, she breathed a sigh of relief.  
_'I didn't realize how much I rely on my powers until I no longer had access to them,'_ she mused to herself as she continued on. _'I feel so weak and vulnerable without them.'_ She laughed wryly to herself. _'I guess I could say I feel so 'human' without them, huh? Odd. I'm so quick to call myself a human, but it's only when I have nothing more than the abilities of a human that I truly feel like one. I guess I'm more different than I realized.'_  
Shaking herself out of her reverie, she continued into the next room, which had three ash-gray rocks each sitting on their own line on the ground ending in a pressure-plate. Beyond them, a dark moat barred the way, the only path across to the following hall being a narrow, spike-covered bridge. With a shrug, the teen stepped forward and pushed first the left-hand rock, then the middle one onto their respective plates. When she reached the right-hand and final rock, however, a protesting voice with a thick Southern accent rang out from it when she bent to push it.  
"Hold there, partner, who said you could push me around, hm?"  
Startled, Eve stopped, staring at the rock with wide eyes.  
"Hello? You gonna answer my question?" the rock pressed.  
"Oh, uh, sorry, I'm just not used to talking rocks," Eve stammered an explanation. "Well, you see, I need you to move along this line and onto that pressure plate, or I can't get past those spikes that are blocking my way."  
"Oh, well, I guess I can do that," the rock responded graciously.  
With that, it slid steadily along the line all the way onto the pressure plate. A heavy thunk as the spikes receded into the floor indicated that the puzzle had been solved.  
"Thanks!" Eve called cheerfully over her shoulder as she strode past the rocks and over the bridge.  
When she walked into the following room, she found a simple space barely wider than the hall itself, empty except for a small wooden table in the far right corner, which held a single wedge of golden-yellow cheese. Mystified, Eve stared at it for a moment, then shrugged and continued on her way.  
When she walked into the next room, her ghost-sense activated, sending up an icy chill from deep in her throat and clouding the air before her face with thick, chilled fog as she exhaled.  
_'Of course the first ability to return is one that's almost completely useless,'_ she figured with a sigh. _'Okay, what's set it off?'_  
Lifting her head, she found a very simplistic, pale white ghost lying in the very center of the room, on a leafbed between two brick pillars set in the walls of the room she stood in. It had the appearance of the clichéd 'bedsheet' ghost, with wide, empty, dark-rimmed eyes staring straight up at the ceiling.  
"Um, excuse me, I need to get by," Eve hailed the ghost hesitantly, hoping that it didn't try to attack her because she wasn't prepared to fight a ghost at the moment.  
The ghost started fake-snoring. Her eyebrow raising incredulously, Eve cautiously approached it. Between its loud snores, she overheard it mumble "Are they gone?"  
_'They don't seem to be planning on moving any time soon,'_ Eve mused, looking around for an alternative route, to no avail.  
"Hey, could you please move?" she requested, nudging the ghost.  
With a shriek, it twisted away from her hand and shot into the air, quivering where it floated with tears welling in the corners of its wide eyes. An odd sensation and a red-blue glow from her chest indicated to Eve that her Soul had been exposed. The ghost seemed puzzled momentarily by the split coloring of her Soul, but its attention was instantly caught by her movement when she stepped forward, hands raised passively. It shied away from her.  
"B-back off!" it - he, it seemed - stammered, tears flying from his eyes and pelting Eve like acid rain before she could dodge. She felt unsteady for an instant when her Soul flickered, but she quickly regained her balance and faced the quivering ghost.  
"Calm down, I don't want to hurt you," she assured him gently. "I just need to get by you so I can be on my way."  
"Oh, okay…" he mumbled. "I'll get out of your way…"  
With that, he faded out of sight.  
Wondering who the ghost had been, Eve stepped over the leafbed and continued down the hall into a room not much bigger than a walk-in closet, with huge, dense spiderwebs in every corner and a sign in the very middle of the room.  
'Spider Bake Sale:  
All proceeds go to real spiders'  
_''Real spiders'?'_ Eve repeated incredulously, one eyebrow raising. _'I've got to see this.'_  
A sign stuck to one of the webs caught her attention - when she approached it, she found it was labeled '7G'. Another, larger web to her right bore a sign labeled '18G'. Noticing a weight in her jacket pocket for the first time, she slipped her hand into it and pulled out a handful of small gold coins. Surprised, she counted them and found she had a total of thirty-two coins. As she approached the '7G' web, she separated out seven of the coins and dropped the rest back into her pocket, then stuck the seven coins on the surprisingly sturdy web. While she watched, a small black spider crawled out of a crevice in the wall, collected the coins, then crawled back into the crevice. After a moment, the spider returned, carrying an iced donut on its back with two of its spindly segmented legs. Uncertainly, Eve reached out for the donut and the spider placed it right in her hand before scurrying right back up the web and disappearing into the crevice.  
"Thank you," Eve called out hesitantly, before lowering her head to eye her newest acquisition. The donut looked like a regular glazed donut, large, light, and puffy with a spiderweb-pattern in thin lines of black icing. Pinching the donut between two fingers, she took a small, hesitant bite out of the soft treat and her eyes widened at the burst of sweetness on her tongue, a buzz of energy rushing through her entire body. Deliberately, she licked icing off of her upper lip, savoring the delicate hint of the golden flowers she'd so often glimpsed, as well as something that tasted similar to cinnamon. She quickly finished the donut. Sticking fourteen more Gold to the web, she waited for the spider to return. When the little arachnid crawled out of the crevice to collect the Gold, she requested a bag for her donuts and it complied. She left the tiny room with two more treats for later stored in a brown paper bag, which hung clipped to her beltloop by an extra safety pin that she'd been surprised to find in her pocket.  
When she walked back into the room where she'd encountered the timid ghost, she looked around and found another archway to her right, which she immediately strode through, to find herself in a long hall extending to her right. A couple of Froggits hopped placidly around the hall, but Eve remained cautious and wary as she walked past them, remembering Toriel's warning.  
When she walked into the next room, she moaned a despairing "You have _got_ to be kidding me," at the sight of six sections of the same dark flooring that she had wanted to avoid, evenly spaced in sets of three along the left- and right-hand wall, and the exit in the far wall blocked by gleaming spikes. Casting a glance to the hint on the stone plaque to her left - _'There is only one switch'_ \- she sighed and prepared herself for more falling through the floor.

Five drops and nearly a sprained ankle later, she found the switch in the mid-left pit. In the meantime, she had reencountered the timid ghost that she had met on the leafbed between the brick pillars; he introduced himself as Napstablook and seemed grateful for her kindness.  
Growing thoroughly tired of the puzzles, Eve walked over the stone bases that hid the spikes that had been blocking her way and into an L-shaped room, taking a sharp right turn after several paces with needle-sharp spikes blocking the exit in the far right-hand wall. Three white pillars stood around the room; one to Eve's right, one in the back-left corner, and one against the back wall near the back-right corner. Noticing a large blue button beside the pillar to her right, Eve wandered around the room and found a green button behind the far-left pillar and a red one beside the far-right one. She looked around for hints, but the walls bore no plaques.  
It took a few tries for her to figure out the proper color combination. When the combination 'blue, red, green' caused the room to turn 90-degrees counterclockwise with a grinding of gears, making Eve stumble and nearly fall over as the ground shifted beneath her feet, and the spikes blocking the exit retracted with a heavy thunk, she assumed that she'd input the correct combination. Upon leaving the room, she found herself in a hall, leafy deep green vines forming a lump hilariously similar to a speed-bump across the path in front of her, and another grew across the hall beyond the hall that branched off to the left shortly after the first vine-ridge. The hall that she stood in continued to what looked like a small room, which piqued Eve's interest. Stepping over the thick vines, she strode down the hall, past where the second hall intersected, and over the second vine-ridge into the brick-walled room, where a Froggit sat alone next to a white-framed doorway. Curious, she slipped through the doorway and found herself in the middle of a narrow balcony that looked out over a vast city in shades of purple, indigo, and gray. As she looked around, she glimpsed something on the floor in the left corner of the balcony. Upon approaching it, she found that it was a small wooden dagger, nothing more than a painted toy, but as she picked it up and found that it almost automatically shifted into a unsettlingly comfortable grip in her hand, she couldn't shake the feeling that it could be a deadly weapon in the wrong hands. She dismissed it immediately - after all, it was pretty ridiculous to consider a mere toy as an instrument of murder - but the feeling didn't dissapate as she tucked the dagger in her pocket and left the balcony. Returning to the hall, she turned onto the intersecting hall and walked up, rustling across a large crimson leafbed before slipping through a wide archway. Looking up, she found herself standing a few feet away from a massive, jet-black tree, its gnarly, twisting branches completely barren, but its base covered by a thick crimson leafbed - the teen briefly wondered if all of the leaves she'd seen so far belonged to it.  
Just then, she looked up and spotted a familiar tall figure in a long white-sleeved purple dress approached. Toriel's blunt muzzle broke into a joyful smile when she noticed the teen standing by the twisted tree.  
"Ah! There you are, my child," she greeted her cheerfully. "You're right on time." Taking the girl's slender hand in her large, furry one, she continued, "Come on inside, small one."  
Smiling up at the gentle humanoid, Eve followed her into the brick house that took up the entire back wall of the large, high-ceilinged room that they stood in, thick leafbeds built up against the sides of the quaint little building.  
The pale yellow wallpaper and bright lighting of the main hall caught Eve by surprise after the subdued purples of the rest of the Ruins. Once her eyes had adjusted, she looked around in intrigue. The open hall was lit by a single dome-shaped fixture hanging from the white ceiling, and most of the rear half was taken up by a wide rectangular stairwell beginning near the right-hand wall and turning left into a U-turn as it descended into darkness. A small bookshelf sat in the far-right corner, not far from where the stairwell began - a calendar hung on the wall above it. A long mirror hung in the middle of the back wall, and a side-table sat in the back left corner with a large, flowering potted plant of a breed that the girl had never seen before.  
"Do you smell that?" Toriel questioned eagerly.  
Now that Eve thought about it, a warm, sweet, baked scent was wafting from what she assumed was the direction of the kitchen.  
"Surprise!" the goat-monster chirped. "It's a butterscotch-cinnamon pie! I thought we might celebrate your arrival with a special treat."  
Eve's eyes widened in surprise, but then she was grinning with more joy than she'd ever experienced.  
"Thank you so much," she whispered, throwing her arms around Toriel and hugging her tight. "You wouldn't believe how long it's been since someone made something special, just for me..."  
Laying her soft, furry hands on Eve's shoulders, Toriel returned the embrace.  
When the two finally separated, Toriel took Eve's hand in hers.  
"Come, little one, I have another surprise for you."  
Wiping tears of joy out of her eyes, Eve nodded, and the two headed down the hall leading to the right. Stopping in front of a closed door, Toriel turned back to Eve.  
"Here it is," she announced, turning the door-handle and opening the door to reveal the room within. "Your very own room!"  
Looking around, Eve walked inside, her amplified sight illuminating everything with a dim aqua-green glow. When she'd located the floor-lamp in the back left corner, she strode to it and pulled on the chain, casting a soft red-tinted light on the bedroom's furnishings - a wooden twin-sized bed covered in a patchwork quilt sat in the back right corner, a toybox at its foot; a small wooden desk with a matching cushioned chair sat against the left wall, beside the lamp; a tall closet stood against the middle of the back wall. Everything was some hue of red, including the walls and even the wood-paneled floor.  
"Do you like it?" Toriel asked as Eve wandered around the room, brushing her fingertips along the soft handstitched quilt, sifting through the toys in the toybox, pawing through the outfits in the closet. It was clearly intended for someone much younger than she, and she wasn't the greatest fan of red, but it was her own.  
"I love it," she murmured.  
Suddenly, she realized that the baking scent wafting from the kitchen had become ever-so-slightly bitter. Her brow furrowing, Toriel turned toward the origin of the scent.  
"Is something burning..?" she murmured, then cut herself off with a gasp. "Oh dear, the pie! I forgot all about it!"  
Hastily she hurried away to rescue the dessert.  
Looking back to the invitingly comfortable bed, Eve realized how tired wandering the Ruins had made her. Walking back to the desk, she pulled off her plaid jacket and hung it on the back of the chair, then emptied her pockets and left their meager contents on the desk - a small handful of Gold, the wooden toy dagger, a few pieces of brightly colored Monster Candy, and a couple of Spider Donuts in a paper bag. Finally, she pulled off her boots and left them beside the desk, then turned off the lamp in the corner of the room. Returning to the bed, she dropped herself onto it with a weary sigh. Within moments, she'd fallen sound asleep.

Eve's eyes opened to a black, empty void in which she floated, her arms and legs dangling at her sides.  
As she looked around, her lips curled into a grimace, sensing a familiar presence - one that she'd hoped never to encounter again.  
Sure enough, when she turned around, an all-too-familiar glowing golden triangle floated behind her, tiny black hands resting on his black cane and his single, slit-pupil eye half-squinting as though he was grinning at her despite his distinct lack of a mouth.  
"Hey there, Spook-Girl!" Bill greeted her, as loud and obnoxious as always. "Long time no see, huh?"  
Eve's frustrated sigh resembled a growl.  
"Oh, for the love of- You lost, Bill. Beat it."  
"Oh, come on, spook, did you really think I'd give up so easily?" Bill questioned teasingly. He let out his trademark laugh, his voice ringing through the boundless abyss that they floated in. "Stop deluding yourself!"  
"I told you before, and I'll keep saying it," Eve snapped. "You're not getting a deal out of me. Ever."  
"Sure, you'll say that now," the dream demon purred, "but I'm sure you remember what I brought upon you last time. This is your final chance, Spook-Girl - after this," if he'd had a mouth, Eve knew it'd be curled upward in an eerie, unnatural grin, "I'm pulling out all stops. Eventually, you won't be able to resist. You might as well surrender now and save yourself the pain."  
Eve smirked, unswayed. "Maybe it's a lost cause, but mark my words, I'm not going to give up without a fight."  
Bill chuckled darkly. "Oh, you'll get your fight, spook - I can assure you of that. And when you do, you'll be begging me to stop like the hypocrite that you are."

When Eve woke, Bill's chilling laugh still echoing through her head, the first thing she noticed was that she was lying on her side in a bed, snugly tucked in under sheet and quilt while a soft melody wafted through the air. For a moment she felt disoriented, but then she remembered where she was and why. Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, she rolled over onto her back and sat up, pushing the covers back in the process. Sensing a familiar icy core in her chest, she lifted a hand. Obediant to the slightest of mental nudges, it lit up in an aqua-green glow, then a further push set it aflame with ghostly energy. With a grin, Eve clenched her hand into a fist, extinguishing the glow. Her powers were back.  
At that moment, she remembered something. Her brow furrowing ever-so-slightly in concentration, she held up her glowing hand palm-up and a familiar wispy aqua-green cat drifted out of the energy with a pitiful mewling noise, hanging limp like a glowing ragdoll in the air.  
"Aww, Spectra, the Plasmius Maximus wiped you out, huh?" the teen murmured sympathetically to her ethereal pet. Spectra meowed again in response. Holding her hand with her palm facing forward, Eve summoned a tiny, swirling ghost-portal in midair, urging her pet, "Go on back into the Ghost Zone and recharge. I'll fetch you later, okay?"  
With a whispery purr, Spectra swooped gracefully into the portal and Eve closed it behind her before she dropped her hand and glanced around the room.  
When Toriel had come in to tuck her in - Eve assumed that it had been her - she left the door slightly ajar, and telling from the warm, flavorful scent wafting through the air, she'd also left a slice of freshly baked pie somewhere in the room. In a moment, Eve located the plate sitting on the desk, a generous slice of pie waiting for her on it. The mouthwatering smell made her stomach growl like one of the angry ghosts that she was so accustomed to fighting, so the slender teen plopped herself down in the chair, picked up the fork resting on the plate's edge, and tucked in.

 _'It's official - butterscotch-cinnamon is my new favorite flavor of pie,'_ Eve decided as she set her fork back onto the now-empty plate with a light clatter and leaned back contentedly, folding her hands behind her head. The delicious dessert had really hit the spot - she guessed that Toriel had additionally imbued it with some kind of healing magic, due to the pleasant tingling sensation it had given her. She felt revitalized.  
Getting up from the desk, she pulled her familiar jacket and boots back on, then picked up her empty plate and left the room. When she opened her bedroom's door, the golden light in the hall felt painfully bright on her eyes, so she waited for a moment to adapt before walking down the hall. She walked through the main entrance and into the next room, which apparently combined the living- and dining-room. In a cushioned chair beside the fireplace, which held a merrily crackling fire, Toriel sat reading a book, a pair of half-rim reading glasses perched on the bridge of her furry white muzzle. At Eve's footsteps, she looked up with a kind smile.  
"Hello, child. Did you sleep well?"  
"Like a rock," Eve affirmed, returning the smile. Gesturing to the empty plate, she mentioned, "The pie was very good."  
"I'm glad you liked it," Toriel responded.  
Setting her book aside, she patted her lap, gesturing for Eve to sit with her, so the teen left her plate on the dining-room table and joined her on the chair.  
"I'm so glad you are living here with me," she began. "I've been alone for such a long time. I have so many things I want to show you down here. I'm also preparing a curriculum for your education. This might surprise you, but I've always wanted to be a teacher." She hesitated. "Actually, that might not surprise you very much. _Still_ ," she emphasized with a huff. Noticing Eve's blank expression, she asked, "Do you need something, my child?"  
Lost in thought, Eve absently shook her head, standing and retrieving her plate. "Not right now, Ms. Toriel. I'm going to wash my plate off."  
Walking past the goat-lady, Eve entered the adjoining room that she had been correct to assume was the, albeit quite small, kitchen and set her plate and fork in the sink, pulling out a tuft of white fur stuck in the drain and throwing it away. Turning on the faucet and squirting some soap on a washcloth, she pondered Toriel's words as she washed her dishes. Toriel was very nice, but did she really want to live with the goat-woman in the Ruins for the rest of her extended life? Now that she had her powers back, it would be a simple matter for her to return to and fly out of the chasm that Vlad threw her into. However, for some reason, she suspected that it wouldn't be as easy as she thought.  
Thinking back to when Vlad had thrown her into the chasm, she realized in retrospect that she'd felt a crackle of invisible magical energy along her body when she dropped beneath the surface, concealed by the remnant of the Plasmius Maximus' powerful shock. Whatever it had been, she doubted it would let her out so easily. Whether she wanted to stay or not, she might not have a choice. But Toriel had been very kind to her so far - would living here really be such a terrible thing?  
Just then, she realized that she'd been rubbing the washcloth in an absentminded circle on the plate for the last few minutes. Quickly she finished washing her plate and fork, shut off the water, and left the dishes to dry. With this taken care of, she walked back through the living/dining room, where Toriel had returned to her book, and into the main entrance. She was going to keep going, but the wide stairwell into the floor caught her eye and she stopped, turning toward it. She'd wondered what was down there since she'd first spotted it, but never asked Toriel about it. Curiously, she leaned over the banister and peered down to the stairs, which continued dropping into purple-tinted shadows. Swinging over the banister, she dropped onto the stairs below, utilizing her ghostly ability to ignore gravity to slow her descent and absorbing the meager remnant of the impact by landing in a crouch. The stairs creaked under her feet as she continued downward, walking into a hall with the same purple-hued walls and floor as the rest of the Ruins.  
At that moment, she heard large footsteps hurrying after her and stopped, turning back and allowing Toriel to catch up with her.  
"How about you play upstairs for now?" the goat-woman requested, taking Eve's hand and leading her back upstairs. Leaving the girl at the top of the stairs, she walked back into the living/dining room, probably to return to her book.  
_'Okay, so she doesn't want me down there,'_ Eve deduced as she walked back to her room. As she reached out to open the door, however, she stopped, withdrawing her hand. _'Why am I going back to my room? There's nothing to do in there. If I'm going to live here, I might as well explore the rest of the house.'_  
Turning away, she walked down the hall. Apparently the house was very small, because the hall ended after two more closed doors, the first one being Toriel's room, the second marked 'Closed for Renovations'.  
In the middle of admiring a strange species of plant sitting in a large pot at the back of the hall, Eve glanced to her left - and found herself staring right into her own eyes, reflected in the long, rectangular mirror hanging from the wall. Entranced, she slowly approached it, gazing into their oceanic depths. The sight of her own eyes caused her to envision many more familiar pairs, faces flashing through her sight in a whirlwind. Danny, Jazz, Mr. and Mrs. Fenton, Dipper, Mabel, Stan, Ford, Sam, Tucker.  
Her brother, Seth.  
His hazel eyes remained in her vision, gazing back at her with joy and adoration.  
Leaning heavily on the table that sat under the mirror, she covered her face with one hand, tears welling in her eyes. How could she possibly think that she could stay here? She had family and friends on the surface, and they missed her. No, she had to return to them.  
When she made that decision, she felt a strange tightness in her chest, as if her soul was swelling with power.  
She felt… determined.

Upon returning to her room, Eve turned on the floor-lamp and searched through the closet for the little knapsack that she'd spotted earlier. When she found it, she stored her remaining eleven Gold in the front pocket and dropped the bag of Spider Donuts and the colorful pieces of Monster Candy in the bigger one, leaving the toy dagger, which she no longer needed now that she had her powers back, in the toybox.  
Looking at the bag in her hands, she exhaled slowly. Now for the hardest part: breaking the news to Ms. Toriel. The poor lady was going to be distraught and Eve felt horrible for hurting her in this way, but she had to return to her real family. Steeling herself, she walked back to the living/dining room and right up to where the goat-woman was still sitting in her easy-chair and reading. At Eve's footsteps, Toriel looked up with a smile, but her smile vanished when she noticed the expression on Eve's face and the bag slung over her shoulder.  
"My child, where are you going?"  
_'It's too late to back out now,'_ Eve reminded herself. _'You've gotta finish what you've started.'_  
"Ms. Toriel," she declared, struggling to keep her voice strong, "you've been really nice to me and all, but I can't stay here. I have to go home."  
Toriel looked distressed.  
"But, my child, this _is_ your home now. Umm…" She hastily gestured to the book she was reading and stammered, "would you like to read this book with me?" She made a thin, pitiable attempt at a cheerful smile. "It's called _72 Uses For Snails_. How about it?"  
The expression of pure misery in her soft red eyes was killing Eve, but she persevered.  
"I'm sorry, Ms. Toriel, but I have to leave. Please, you must know some way out of here. Tell me how to leave the Ruins."  
"I… I…"  
Setting aside her book and reading-glasses, Toriel stood.  
"I need to go do something. Please remain here until I return."  
"Ms. Toriel-!" Eve started, but Toriel hurried out of the room before she could finish. A sense of dread rising within her, Eve dashed after the goat-lady in time to glimpse a flash of white fur from the bottom of the stairs.  
_'There must be something down there that can at least help me escape the Ruins,'_ she realized, clearing the banister in a single bound and bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet when she hit the stairs below. _'No wonder she wanted me to stay upstairs.'_  
Looking up, she spotted Toriel's retreating back a little distance ahead of her.  
"Ms. Toriel!" she cried out, dashing after her. "Ms. Toriel, wait!"  
Although she didn't turn around, the monster halted, allowing Eve to catch up with her. Eve opened her mouth to speak, but Toriel got ahead of her.  
"You wish to know how to return 'home', do you not?"  
Eve stifled a guilty flinch at the dull, lifeless monotone in her voice.  
"At the end of this hall is the exit out of the Ruins." She squared her shoulders. "I am going to destroy it. No one will ever be able to leave here again. Now please, be a good child and go upstairs."  
With that, she kept walking, but Eve kept pace with her.  
"Ms. Toriel, why would you do that?!" she demanded in shock. "Why would you keep me trapped down here?! I've got to return to my family and friends on the surface!"  
"I'm doing this to protect you!" Toriel countered with a sob. "I've seen it over and over again. I've lost so many of my children to this choice. They come, they leave, they die. Don't you get it?" She stopped in her tracks, hiding her face in her large, furred hands. "If you leave, they… **Asgore** … will kill you. I can't let that happen again. So please, _please_ , go upstairs."  
Rubbing a hand across her eyes, she continued down the hall, which turned to the left after a few feet. Eve followed. When she turned the corner, she laid her eyes for the first time on what Toriel was keeping her from. The Ruins' exit took the form of a huge, majestic purple door, framed with the same pillar-esque design as the archways at the Ruins' beginning and bearing a larger version of the symbol on Toriel's dress.  
Sensing Eve's presence behind her, Toriel sighed, her shoulders drooping.  
"You're that intent on leaving, child?" she murmured.  
"Ms. Toriel," Eve insisted quietly, "I've got to return to my brother."  
Toriel sighed. "Alright."  
Inititally Eve was relieved when Toriel turned around, but the relieved smile was wiped from her face by the goat-lady's determined expression.  
"Then prove it to me," she commanded. "Prove to me that you are strong enough to survive."  
"What?!" Eve gasped as a pair of scarlet fireballs materialized over Toriel's upraised hands. With a startled squeak, the slender teen dropped to the ground and somersaulted out of the way of Toriel's scarlet flamethrowers.  
Bouncing back to her feet, Eve rose her hands in surrender and cried, "Ms. Toriel, stop! You don't have to do this!"  
"Fight me or run away!" Toriel demanded, throwing another round of flaming bullets at the halfa, who leapt backward, avoiding it again. She realized that she'd have to be more decisive if she wanted the upset monster to listen.  
"I won't fight you, Ms. Toriel," Eve declared firmly, dodging another attack with the ease that only came from experience. "If I truly show you how strong I am, I could kill you in an instant, and that's the last thing I want to happen."  
Toriel paused in the middle of readying another attack.  
"My child, what do you mean?"  
Standing straight, Eve showed off the glowing bicolor heart that had appeared on her chest when Toriel first laid down her challenge.  
"Didn't you wonder why I have a Soul that's part-human and part-monster?"  
"I… didn't actually notice," Toriel responded hesitantly.  
"Well, I wasn't sure if I wanted to tell you this or not," Eve explained, closing her eyes, "but here's the thing." She opened her eyes again, to reveal that they glowed a bright aqua-green. "I'm half-ghost."  
With a flash and two sweeping white rings, she transformed into her familiar ghost-side, Ether. As the rings of light passed over her, her hair turned white, her skin became more pale, and her outfit changed from the purple plaid jacket, white tee, jeggings, and boots to a form-fitting black bodysuit with a white V-shaped collar and skirt, which was connected to her bodysuit with the same V-shaped pattern as what marked her collar. At the point of her collar, an aqua-green symbol meant to look like a capital E disguised as a simplistic ghost in midflight - the symbol Eve had designed for her spectral alias - added a splash of vibrant color to the ghost-girl's color-scheme. A pair of white elbow-length gloves and knee-high heeled boots, each drawn to a point at their respective joints, complemented the outfit - the gloves bore aqua-green semispherical gems on the upperside of Ether's wrists, while the boots bore matching gems on the point below Ether's knee. Ignoring gravity as was its custom, her snow-white ponytail, done up with a jet-black band, drifted in the air like she floated underwater. Although she wasn't underwater, she had begun floating when she 'went ghost', the pointed toes of her white boots lifted a few inches off of the floor.  
Spreading her arms, she indicated her newly revealed alternate form to the wide-eyed Toriel.  
"In this form, I can fly with incredible agility at over 125 miles an hour, lift things nearly thirty times my own weight, throw an energy blast at the speed of a bullet and strong enough to break through concrete, summon ghost-fire hot enough to melt steel, duplicate myself to some degree, and even use a form of a sonic scream that I call my ghostly wail. Plus, I've recently learned cryokinesis, so I can also form and control ice," she added. "And if that wasn't enough to prove my capability, I've been living alone for over four years, so I've got street-smarts working for me. If anyone's strong enough to survive, it's me."  
"My child," Toriel whispered, pulling Ether into a tight embrace.  
Initially startled by the sudden movement, the halfa returned the embrace with a sad smile.  
"I'm sorry to leave you, Ms. Toriel, but I know I'm capable to take care of myself. You don't need to worry about me. Those other humans might've died down here, but I sure as heck won't." She grinned reassuringly. "I'm too determined to live."  
Toriel gave her an odd look as though the term reminded her of someone, but the expression was gone before Ether could process it.  
"I'm sorry, small one," she murmured - Ether felt her tears wetting a shoulder of her bodysuit. "It's selfish of me to keep you here. You have a human family to return to. So for you, I'll," she swallowed hard, "I'll set aside my loneliness."  
Finally releasing the halfa, Toriel stepped back and offered her a shaky smile.  
"Be good, alright?"  
Ether nodded and watched as Toriel walked past her and back into the hall. Torn, the gentle monster hesitated there, but then continued down the hall to the right, causing Ether to lose sight of her.  
"See you when I see you, Ms. Toriel," the teen murmured, turning back to the imposing door. With a flash, she reverted to her human state before grasping the doorknob firmly and turning it, pulling open the heavy door with a prominent creak - the door clearly hadn't been used in a long time. Casting a final glance back to the empty hall behind her, Eve slipped through the space between the door and its stone frame, pulling the door closed behind her with a heavy, booming thud.

Eve traveled up the purple-hued corridor with a determined stride as the hall around her gradually grew lighter, until finally, she found herself in front of a familiar archway framed by stone carved to look like pillars. She walked through it into utter darkness.  
When her eyes adjusted - which didn't take long - Eve found that she stood in a familiar, craggy, dome-shaped cavern, dark except for the sunlight streaming from a hole in the rocky ceiling overhead onto a patch of green grass and the all-too-familiar oversized golden flower bobbing cheerfully in its center, a mocking grin turning up the corners of its narrow black mouth. At her sides, Eve's hands curled into fists as she glared at the flower.  
" _You._ "  
Flowey chuckled darkly with an unpleasant sneer, narrowing his tiny black eyes.  
"Well well well. Aren't you the clever one? You managed to cheat on the one law of this world."  
His face became hideous.  
" **You spared the life of a single monster. You must feel very proud of yourself. But what will you do when you meet a merciless killer, huh?** "  
"Shut up," Eve snarled, her eyes and fists lighting up with ghostly aqua-green energy.  
Flowey chuckled mockingly at the show of strength.  
"Oh-ho, so the little human's got pretty little powers now."  
Now it was Eve's turn to chuckle, her tone grim and mirthless.  
"Oh, don't you wish I only just got these powers. Unfortunately for you, I've had them for years - they'd just been blocked off the last time we met. But now I've got them back, and I'll only warn you once, demon flower -" her grin vanished. "You even _think_ about repeating that little stunt you pulled back then and _so help me_ I will blast you into next year. _Got that?_ " she emphasized, her tone dangerous and daring him to contradict her.  
"Don't worry, I hear you loud and clear," Flowey mockingly assured her, adding with a sneer, "as well as I can with nothing resembling ears."  
With that, he popped back underground, leaving his menacing laugh hanging in the air.  
Her lip curling in a disgusted snarl, Eve stalked across the cavern and into the archway on the opposite side. Her vision faded to white as static filled her ears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, looks like Eve has not one but TWO psychotic jerks to deal with. Oh joy, this will be interesting :P


	3. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Eve meets a pair of (not so) spooky scary skeletons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I trolled you guys before but this is the actual Chapter 2 - very very late but hey, it's here ^^"

The first thing Eve noticed when she stepped beyond the huge door, which swung shut behind her with a heavy, booming thud—wait, hadn't she just walked through an archway?—was that it was absolutely frigid. Even with her natural preference for colder temperatures, induced by being half-ghost, Eve found herself chilled as her boots crunched along the snow-dusted path. The barren, charcoal-gray trees around her loomed high overhead, spiky branches slicing the gray 'sky' into geometric fragments. As she continued along the path, she grew increasingly uneasy, the sensation of being watched growing.  
Suddenly, she whipped around with a gasp, detecting the sound of footsteps approaching from behind her.  
The path behind her was empty.  
Shivering for reasons besides the cold, she cautiously continued onward.  
A little while later, she stepped over a large, tough-looking branch lying across the path. She'd barely taken a dozen steps when a booming crack burst from behind her. Whipping around again, she stared in shock at the branch, which had been completely shattered like driftwood. Her heart racing, she muttered a curse under her breath, hugged herself tighter, and hurried on, her discomfort infusing her eyes with an aqua-green glow.  
Finally, she reached a wooden bridge traversing a chasm that split the ground between the treelines. A strange wooden structure stood over it, like someone had started barring off the bridge but had left it unfinished, with ridiculously wide gaps between the bars.  
"Human," a voice low in volume and pitch drawled from right behind the teen, making her freeze in shock, "don't you know how to greet a new pal? Turn around and shake my hand."  
Hiding her left hand, which glowed aqua-green in preparation for an ectoplasmic blast, behind her back, Eve cautiously turned around. The speaker was a stout, childlike figure about a head and a half shorter than she. His fur-lined hood hid his face in shadows and his hands were shoved deep into the pockets of the tealish blue hoodie he wore over his stained white tee, but when Eve turned around, he offered her his right hand, which she took after a moment of hesitation. The moment her hand firmly grasped his, an obnoxiously loud noise strikingly similar to a fart burst out from the grasp, as the short figure casually threw back his hood with his free hand. Eve jumped backward, both fists now alight with the dangerously volatile energy in full view of the stranger as she stared wide-eyed at the other's round, bleached-white skull, little points of white light glowing from within his deep, pitch-black eyesockets. At the moment, his eyesockets were scrunched up in amusement, a wide, mischievous grin revealing what looked like a single, inseparable row of teeth joining his skull and fixed jaw.  
"Well, you're awfully jumpy, it was just a prank," the skeleton remarked, shoving his hand back into his pocket. Somehow he managed to talk through his teeth without whistling, Eve observed. His chin moved a bit with his speech, giving the impression that his jaw and teeth were slightly flexible. He nodded toward her glowing fists. "Although that's a pretty neat trick you pulled there."  
With an automatic glance to them, Eve dropped her hands to her sides as their glow faded, but remained tense and wary.  
"Who're you?" she demanded.  
The short figure rocked back on his heels with a casual shrug and a grin, although admittedly he seemed unable to make any other expression.  
"I'm Sans. Sans the skeleton."  
"Yeah, I figured that last part out," Eve muttered, her eyes darting over his figure again. His worn, apparently well-loved hoodie, which didn't seem to have been washed in a while, hung off of him in a manner that implied a lack of mass underneath the fabric, his bleached-white collarbones and the top of his sternum peeked out from the low collar of his white shirt, and his exposed legs between the hem of his white-striped, knee-length black shorts and the gray socks he wore with his faded pink house-slippers appeared to be mere bones.  
"To be honest," Sans continued, "I'm supposed to be hunting for humans right now, but..." He shrugged. "Eh, I don't really care about capturing anybody. And," he gestured to her hands again, "something tells me you're less human than you look, anyway."  
"Well, I might as well tell you, since you've practically figured it out already," Eve admitted. "I'm half ghost. My hands were glowing because I was preparing to blast you if you attacked me."  
"It's good to be prepared, especially for a human in the Underground," Sans agreed. "Or, you know, part human."  
The ease with which he took the news of her being part ghost surprised Eve, but she shrugged it off.  
"And around here, you've really got to watch your step," Sans cautioned her, but the lighthearted tone in his grin showed that he wasn't being entirely serious. "I might not care too much about capturing anyone, but my brother, Papyrus—he's a human-hunting _fanatic_."  
At Eve's worried expression, he added reassuringly, "But don't worry, he's pretty harmless. Probably wouldn't attack you even if you attacked him first."  
Suddenly, the points of light in his eyesockets vanished.  
"But don't get any ideas, buddy."  
Eyebrows shooting up in shock, Eve took an involuntary step back, raising her hands in surrender.  
"Whoa, okay, no need to get defensive."  
The friendliness in Sans' grin returned with his eyelights.  
"Sorry, didn't mean to scare you there. I'm just really protective of my bro."  
"Hey, I get you," Eve assured him. "I've got a brother, too."  
"Really?" The ridge of bone over Sans' eyesockets rose, mimicking eyebrows. "That's neat."  
Just then, he glanced over her shoulder.  
"Hey, speaking of bros, I think I see Papyrus over there." He looked back to her with a mischievous grin. "I've got an idea. Go through this gate-thing." He glanced toward the wooden structure built over the bridge as he spoke to indicate what he meant.  
Eve glanced to the structure, one eyebrow raised.  
"Yeah, go on through," Sans urged her. "My bro made the bars too wide to stop anyone."  
"I noticed," Eve remarked sarcastically, turning and walking across the bridge with Sans close behind.  
Together, the two walked down the snow-covered path, hidden gravel crunching under their shoes, to an equally snowy clearing. A strangely shaped lamp sat in the snow to their left and what appeared to be a wooden sentry station stood nearer to the opposite treeline, while the path continued past the station, the angular trees closing in around it.  
"Quick, behind that conveniently shaped lamp," Sans urged the teen.  
Eve grinned knowingly.  
"No need, Sans."  
With that, she mentally activated her ghostly powers to turn herself completely invisible. Sans blinked in surprise when she completely and unexpectedly vanished.  
"Well, you're just full of surprises, aren't you?"  
Just then, a tall, lanky skeleton with long, angular eyebrows and a square jaw strode up from the opposite path. He was dressed in a costume made up of a white chestplate edged with yellow and bearing a triangular red design on the left breast, a navy, yellow-edged bowl-shape around his hips, and oversized red gloves and boots with a tattered scarf of the same brilliant red—a tight charcoal-gray bodysuit covered the exposed bone-structure.  
"'Sup, bro?" Sans casually greeted the costumed skeleton.  
"You know very well what's 'sup', brother!" Papyrus—Eve assumed this new skeleton was the brother who Sans had mentioned—countered with an irritated glare at the unfazed skeleton. He had a loud, pompous voice, with a very slight rasp as if he was just starting to lose his voice. "I can't even remember when you last _recalibrated your puzzles_!"  
He seemed very frustrated by this—Eve guessed that he'd mentioned the matter before.  
Sans shrugged with a wink.  
"Sorry, bro, I'm just 'bone' tired right now."  
Eve stifled a snort of laughter at the pun.  
"You always say that!" Papyrus protested. "You cannot simply leave your puzzles unready! A human could come at any moment!"  
"But a human hasn't come in years," Sans mentioned.  
"Perhaps not," Papyrus conceded reluctantly, "but I do believe that today will be the day! The day when all of my hard work finally pays off! A human will come today, Sans, I just know it!"  
Sans' smile was soft.  
"You sure are confident about that, huh?"  
"I am!" Papyrus affirmed, setting his gloved hands on his hips and puffing out his chest. "And I, the Great Papyrus, will be the one to capture them! No thanks to you, of course, you lazybones," he added huffily.  
"But what if they're not exactly what you're expecting?" the shorter skeleton questioned quietly.  
Papyrus gave him a blank look.  
"What was that, Sans?"  
"Nevermind," Sans brushed it off with a casual grin. "So hey, you go on ahead and make sure your puzzles are set up. I'll be right after you."  
"Of course!" Papyrus agreed enthusiastically—he seemed to do everything with some degree of enthusiasm. Spinning around, he strode off down the snow-covered path.  
Once his brother was out of earshot, Sans glanced to Eve.  
"Okay, kid, you can turn visible now."  
Wondering how the skeleton was able to pinpoint her location even though he couldn't see her, Eve released her mental hold on her powers, making herself visible again.  
"He's very excited about the prospect of finding a human," the teen noted.  
"Papyrus really wants to be in the Royal Guard," Sans explained. "Capturing a human would fulfill his dream for sure." He looked up to her almost tentatively. "So, uh, hey, could you do me a huge favor?"  
Eve returned his gaze, indicating that she was listening.  
"Could you keep on pretending to be a human—you know, a full one? Seeing you would make his day."  
The halfa nodded agreeably. "Sure, so long as you don't think it'll be dangerous."  
"Nah, my bro's not dangerous," Sans assured her, "even though he tries to be. He's always really nice to everyone. I'm surprised he's not made of ice, 'cause he's the coolest bro anyone could ever have," he added, his tone showing how much he admired and cared about the other skeleton.  
After a moment, he seemed to jostle himself out of his reverie.  
"Anyway, I'll meet you up ahead."  
With that, he turned and walked back toward the gate. Eve turned after him, confused.  
"Sans, you're going the wrong way…?"  
But the skeleton was gone. Sky-blue sparks drifted in the wintry air where he'd just been.  
Eve blinked in surprise.  
"Huh. Weird."  
For a moment, she stared mystified at where Sans had inexplicably disappeared, but then shrugged and turned in the opposite direction, walking across the clearing and down the snow-dusted gravel path in the same direction as Papyrus, her dark-brown suede boots crunching through the crisp snow.  
Not long after reentering the treeline—the trees from this point became snow-covered pine-trees with slate-blue needles coating their black branches—the gravel path angled diagonally to the left through the dense forest before reaching a junction. The path she walked on branched into two—one continuing diagonally to the left, at the end of which Eve could glimpse the shore of a deep, dark river, and the other continuing diagonally to the right—Eve could hear the voices of Sans and Papyrus from that direction.  
When she turned out of the trees onto a long, straight path, she spotted the two skeletons where they stood several feet away. His tattered crimson scarf fluttering in an imperceptible breeze, Papyrus stood tall with his arms folded and one booted foot tapping impatiently against the ground, while Sans stood beside him, his hands shoved in his hoodie's deep pockets and his mouth turned up in a lazy grin—reaching just above Papyrus' pelvic girdle, he seemed dwarfed next to his taller brother, who stood just over a head taller than Eve herself.  
"We've been standing here for almost an entire minute!" Papyrus declared impatiently. "What are we even waiting for?!"  
"What's the matter, Paps?" Sans asked with a mischievous grin. "Are you feeling 'chilled to the bone'?"  
"Sans!" the lanky, costumed skeleton groaned loudly in protest.  
"And anyway," the stouter skeleton added, gesturing to Eve, "they've arrived."  
"Who?" Papyrus asked, turning to the teen. Upon sighting her, his eyesockets lit up. "Oh my gosh!" Practically quivering in excitement, he leaned toward Sans and stage-whispered—which was probably as quiet as he could manage—"Is that a human?!"  
Sans hesitated for a moment, but at Eve's discreet thumbs-up, he grinned and affirmed, "Yep, that's a human."  
"Oh my gosh!" Papyrus shouted again. Drawing himself up officiously, he pointed at Eve and declared, "Human! You shall not pass this area! For I, the Great Papyrus, shall capture you for the Royal Guard, and for King Asgore!"  
At those words, Eve felt her Soul grow cold in horror.

 _"I'm doing this to protect you!" Toriel countered with a sob. "I've seen it over and over again. I've lost so many of my children to this choice. They come, they leave, they die. Don't you see? Don't you understand?" She stopped in her tracks, hiding her face in her large, furred hands. "If you leave, they… **Asgore** … will kill you..."_

"So prepare yourself for the greatest challenge of your life! Nyeh heh heh heh!" Papyrus finished his speech with a triumphant laugh and dashed away.  
Once Papyrus was out of earshot, Sans offered the hybrid teen a grateful smile, approaching her with his hands shoved deep in his pockets.  
"Hey, thanks a skele-ton for this," he remarked. "This is the happiest I've ever seen him."  
Upon catching sight of her expression, however, his grin faded to one of a more concerned caliber.  
"Hey, kiddo, you look like you've seen a ghost, if you don't mind the term. Something the matter?"  
Eve exhaled heavily.  
"I'm really sorry to let you down, Sans, but I can't let your brother capture me. I've already heard some unpleasant things about Asgore and I'd rather avoid an encounter if possible."  
To her surprise, instead of seeming disappointed, Sans offered her a casual, light-hearted grin.  
"That's alright, kiddo, I understand," he assured her. "But you know," he added with a chuckle, "knowing my bro, he'll probably end up befriending you instead."  
Turning the direction Papyrus had bolted, he added, "Now, believe me, I am 'relish'ing this conversation, but we'd better 'mustard' up the energy to go 'ketchup' with Papyrus."  
Eve snorted a laugh at the series of expertly recited puns. When she looked up again, the undersized skeleton had vanished just like before.  
_'How does he keep doing that?'_ she wondered, heading down the path in the direction that he'd indicated.  
As she walked along the snow-covered path with her hands hidden in the pockets of her plaid jacket, she passed a guard-station with an uneven slanted roof of two sheets of corrugated metal standing alone in the middle of a small clearing just before the slate-needled pines closed in around her once more. When she stopped to more closely examine the station, she found that it was actually made of a large cardboard box, with a sign tacked to the front. She smiled in amusement at the handwritten narrative it held, which could only have been written by Sans' boisterous brother.  
'YOU OBSERVE THE WELL-CRAFTED SENTRY STATION. WHO COULD HAVE BUILT THIS, YOU PONDER. I BET IT WAS THAT VERY FAMOUS ROYAL GUARDSMAN!! (NOTE: NOT YET A VERY FAMOUS ROYAL GUARDSMAN.)'  
_'He is, however, rather narcissistic,'_ the halfa wryly observed, continuing on her way.  
Just beyond that point, she stopped at the sight of another station, this one in better condition and more official-looking than the previous, built of wooden slats with a slanted roof. A wiry white canine humanoid with pointed black ears and black patches of fur around his narrow brown eyes, which gleamed over a narrow snout tipped with a black nose, slouched over the edge of the station's counter with one paw propping up his head and the other dangling over the edge with a smoking dog treat in its grasp. Although the bipedal canine seemed calm and relaxed at the moment, Eve sensed that he had an acute awareness of his surroundings, emphasized by the sign stuck in the snow to her left—'Absolutely NO MOVING!!!!'  
Uncertain if even her full invisibility would properly hide her, she took great care in creeping past the guard, not desiring to draw attention to herself and her unique half-and-half Soul.  
However, she had forgotten about her footprints. Spotting the mysterious footprints in the snow, the guard shot up, dropping the dog treat.  
"MOVING!" he roared, making Eve jump.  
With a hissed "Crap!" the halfa bolted away as quickly as her legs could take her as the guard launched himself over the counter, producing, in the paw that didn't support his weight, a long dagger with a blade that faintly glowed an icy blue. As he whipped his narrow head about, searching for her, she transported herself far out of his line of vision. Only then did she allow herself to regain visibility, breathing heavily with her hands on her knees.  
"Oh boy," she huffed breathlessly. "It's been a long time since something startled me that badly."  
Straightening once she'd caught her breath, she looked around with a muttered, "Okay, so where am I now?"  
She stood before another clearing, which featured a slick ice-patch consuming the entire expanse of ground. Beyond the patch the path continued, along with another branching off of the patch to the left, while a lone wooden sign stood right in the center of the ice, on the only patch of ground in the entire clearing.  
"The woods, of course," announced a familiar voice to her left, startling the girl. "Where else?"  
With a startled curse, Eve whipped to the source of the voice.  
"Heya," Sans greeted her with his usual grin and casual air, briefly removing one hand from his pocket to give her a wave.  
"Oh hey, didn't see you there," the halfa greeted him, getting over her initial surprise.  
The short skeleton shrugged. "Most people don't. But anyway," he continued, "I wanted to let you know about something you'll have to look out for."  
Noting that he had Eve's attention, he explained, "Paps has a special kind of magical attack known simply as a 'blue attack'. If you see magical attacks with a blue aura, hold still and they won't hurt you even if they fly right through you."  
"I wonder if that guard back there had the same magic," Eve muttered half to herself, glancing back in the direction of the canine guard that she'd just narrowly evaded. "His dagger was glowing blue."  
"He does," Sans affirmed, overhearing her remark. "Still not sure if that influenced his inability to see living things that are standing still or the other way around."  
Eve humphed in intrigue, her eyebrows rising. "Monsters are that closely connected to their magic?"  
"Yep," Sans affirmed. "Magic is a vital part of a monster's body. That's why a monster turns to dust in a matter of seconds when their Soul is destroyed." He grimaced at that remark as though it brought up an unpleasant memory.  
"Huh. Well, thanks for the advice," Eve thanked him, to which the skeleton grinned with a wink.  
"No problem, kiddo."  
Turning on one slippered foot, he strolled into the forest of pines behind him and disappeared into the shadows, leaving Eve alone in the clearing once more.  
Carefully stepping onto the ice-patch before her, Eve slid across its surface to the sign, nearly colliding with it in the process. Reorienting herself with both hands gripping the sign for stability, she scanned it. It was labeled in this manner: 'North = Ice, South = Ice, West = Ice, East = Snowdin Town (….and ice).'  
Eve snorted. It seemed that jokes were popular in this wintry area.  
_'And seriously?_ Snowdin _Town? Even the town's name is a pun.'_  
Following the arrow pointing upward—North—she skidded across the ice and walked down the short path to a snow-covered cliff, where a smiling snowman stood.  
As she neared the snowman, it suddenly spoke, its voice soft and whispering like an icy breeze.  
"Excuse me, miss. Do you think you could help me out?"  
Eve gave the rounded figure her attention, not even surprised by yet another usually inanimate object proving capable of speech.  
"I wish to see the world," the snowman explained, "but I cannot move. Could you please take a piece of me with you on your travels?"  
"Oh, uh, sure," Eve agreed, surprised but agreeable.  
"Thank you very much," the snowman responded gratefully. "So… well, you need to take the piece yourself. You know, because I can't move…"  
"Oh, right."  
Hesitant through an uncertainty about how this would feel for the snowman, she carefully scooped a decent-sized handful of surprisingly firm snow out of the snowman's abdomen-lump, utilizing her cryokinesis to surround the lump in rock-solid ice for its protection.  
"Thank you for your generosity," the snowman thanked her again. "I can't wait to see what we get into."  
"No problem," Eve responded graciously, tucking the ice-encased chunk of snow into her drawstring bag.  
With her most recent acquisition safely secured, Eve left the cliff and slid across the ice-patch to the other path. From there, she stole through the snow, her boots crunching into the hidden gravel, to the following clearing, where Papyrus and Sans waited for her. On either side of the clearing, the ground dropped away into the unknown depths with a wide path continuing past the area, after which it seemed to open up significantly. In the center of the area between Eve and the two skeletons, the snow had been cleared away, revealing a square-shaped section of charcoal-gray earth.  
"There you are, human!" Papyrus exclaimed. "Now prepare yourself for," he paused dramatically, "the Invisible Electricity Maze!" He gestured to the barren expanse between them. "Touch any of the walls and this orb," he held up a deep gray glasslike orb, which faded to royal blue in the center, "will give you a hearty zap!"  
Sans grinned mischievously.  
"Huh. Sounds like you're going to have-"  
"Sans, don't you _dare_ finish that sentence-"  
"-an 'electrifying' experience."  
"Sans!" Papyrus shouted in exasperation, throwing up the orb as he clapped his gloved hands to the sides of his skull.  
Laughing, the short skeleton caught the orb in his outstretched left hand and tossed it to Eve, somehow landing it right in her hands with little movement on her part.  
"Go for it, kiddo," he encouraged her.  
Biting her lip, Eve weighed her options. She could simply toss aside the orb and walk across—that would remove any danger of being shocked but would disappoint Papyrus and probably upset Sans, since according to him, Papyrus has been looking forward to this day for countless years. She could also use her ability to ignore gravity and fly over the maze—that would also remove any danger of being shocked, but to do that she'd have to reveal her alias, and she wasn't sure she was ready to do that just yet. Additionally, that would have the same result as her first option. Her third option was to solve the puzzle honestly. She cringed at the thought of the shocks she could receive, but when she considered, so long as she paid close attention to herself, she could tell when an open electrical current circulated nearby. It wouldn't be easy, but she could get through. Straining all of her senses in search of the invisible electrical current, she cautiously stepped forward, the orb clasped in one hand. When she stood a pace before the edge of the square clearing, she immediately stopped, sensing the electricity's close proximity. Senses on high alert, she slowly paced alongside the clearing until the energy she was sensing lessened. Taking a deep breath, she stepped forward into the maze.

In this manner, Eve painstakingly made her way through the maze, every moment expecting a shock. Before she'd processed that she'd made it all the way through the maze, she found herself standing right in front of the skeleton brothers.  
"Impressively done, human!" Papyrus declared. "I'm off to prepare the next puzzle!"  
With a nasally, enthusiastic laugh, he dashed off. Eve was about 99% certain that he moonwalked.  
When Papyrus had left earshot, Sans turned to Eve with a grateful smile.  
"He seems to be having fun. Thanks."  
"No problem," the halfa responded hesitantly, still tensed after the maze she'd just survived. "Are they all going to be that… dangerous?"  
Sans grinned.  
"Aw, come on, I'm not going to tell you that. That would spoil the surprise."  
She glared at him and he laughed at her expression, a surprisingly deep and rolling cadence for a person of his stature.  
"But hey, did you notice that costume he's wearing?" he remarked.  
"How could you miss it?" Eve snorted.  
"I helped him make it for a costume party a few years ago," Sans explained. "He hasn't worn anything else ever since—calls it his 'battle body'," he added.  
"I'm… not sure what to think of that," Eve remarked with a laugh. "Your brother seems to be a little eccentric."  
"Nah, my bro's awesome," Sans denied, smiling softly at the thought of his brother. He seemed to miss Eve's shrug as the halfa realized that she wouldn't be able to change the skeleton's lofty opinion of Papyrus.  
"Anyhoo, you'd better be heading along," the skeleton mentioned suddenly. "No sense in standing around out here in the cold."  
"You can feel the cold?" Eve asked. "I don't mean to be rude but you're kind of a skeleton."  
"Yeah, and I bet I feel it even worse than you do," Sans mentioned with a grin. "'Cause you know, it 'goes right through me'."  
Eve snorted a laugh, playfully shoving his shoulder.  
"Bonehead."  
"Aw, you're gonna make me blush," Sans joked.  
Eve rolled her eyes, shaking her head at her companion's antics.  
"Okay, I'm going now," she decided, turning to follow Papyrus' bootprints in the snow.  
"M'kay," Sans' voice agreed from behind her, closely followed by a faint buzzing noise.  
Turning back, Eve found that the skeleton had once again vanished without a trace, leaving only a couple sky-blue sparks drifting in the air where he'd been.  
"How the heck does he keep doing that?" she muttered to herself, her brow furrowing in confusion.  
After a moment of staring cluelessly at where the skeleton had been, she shrugged to herself and continued on, her boots crunching through the thick white snow.  
Beyond the Invisible Electricity Maze, she found a blue-furred humanoid with a rabbit's head and features leaning on what looked like an ice-cream stand, striped in red and yellow. Dressed in red overalls over a yellow short-sleeved shirt, the monster looked strangely dejected, staring forlornly at the snow-covered ground at his feet.  
"Why doesn't anyone want to buy my treats?" he moaned hopelessly as Eve approached him. "I've been trying for years but not a single purchase…"  
"Purchase of what?" Eve asked, catching the monster's attention.  
He beamed, his tall ears standing straight from where they'd been flopped over. "Why, Nice Cream, of course! The frozen treat that warms your heart! Here:" reaching into the stand, he pulled out an ice-cream bar enclosed within a colorful paper package, "try it for yourself!"  
"Oh, uh, thanks," Eve responded, caught off-guard by the item suddenly shoved into her hands. Holding up the bar, she found something written on a white space on the packaging:  
'You look lovely today!'  
The girl smiled. _'I guess that's why it's called 'Nice Cream'.'_  
"Enjoy, friend!" the rabbit-monster chirped happily as the halfa walked away, dropping the Nice Cream bar into her bag.  
Crossing a narrow wooden bridge, she walked into the larger expanse that she'd glimpsed beyond the Maze. With a few slate-needled pine-trees scattered about the area, a cleared expanse somewhat resembling a snowy golf-course took up the majority of the ground before her—beyond it, she glimpsed a couple more guard-stations like the one with the keen-eyed canine who she'd narrowly escaped. The ground seemed to drop off past the stations—upon looking around, Eve spotted another continuation of the path past the golf-course, beginning at the far-right edge of the area.  
Meanwhile, sitting on the cleared space a few feet from where she stood, a large snowball rested. It seemed to be waiting for someone to kick it around.  
Eve looked around, wondering if this was Papyrus' puzzle, but if the costumed skeleton was nearby, he was hiding himself expertly. The girl looked around, then back to the ball, then shrugged and walked past, not particularly caring about the game. As she walked, a pair of familiar voices became clear—when she reached the right-hand path, she found Sans and Papyrus awaiting her.  
"Ah, there you are, human!" Papyrus exclaimed upon catching sight of the girl. "Now, prepare yourself for…" The skeleton trailed off upon spotting the single piece of paper sitting on the ground between Eve and the two skeletons. "Sans!" he protested, stomping his foot in childish anger. "Where is the puzzle?!"  
With a shrug and a grin, Sans gestured to the piece of paper. "Right there. Go on, kid." He winked at Eve. "It's not gonna bite 'cha."  
One eyebrow rising, Eve walked to the paper and crouched, picking it up. Next to a large picture of a dog-faced ice-cube, the page was printed with a square of letters sixteen by six in size, with a list of a couple dozen words below it—one of which Eve was positive was nothing but gibberish.  
"Well, this is a bit anticlimactic," she muttered to herself, turning an incredulous look on the older of the two skeletons. "Seriously, Sans?"  
The skeleton shrugged, closing his eyes. "Sorry, kiddo. Knew I should've used today's crossword."  
"Crossword?!" Papyrus repeated, sounding indignant. "Sans! I cannot believe you!"  
"No it isn't," Sans responded with a lazy grin. "That's just for baby-bones."  
Papyrus stared at him, confused. "Um… what isn't? What's for baby-bones?"  
The shorter skeleton's eyesockets shot open. For an instant, an odd look flashed in his eyes, but it was gone before Eve could process it. "Oh, uh, I was expecting you to say something about junior jumble being harder," he hastily explained. "You're always saying that."  
"Well, it is," Papyrus insisted, seeming to have already forgotten about the odd moment. Suddenly, he pointed to Eve, who had dropped the paper back onto the ground and stood. "Human! Solve this dispute! Which is harder—junior jumble or crossword?"  
"Oh, well, easily crossword," Eve snorted, crossing her arms.  
"You two are weird," Papyrus announced huffily, crossing his arms and unintentionally mirroring Eve's pose. "Crosswords are easy—I just fill in all the boxes with 'Z's, because when I see a crossword, all it does it make me fall asleep!"  
With that, the skeleton speed-moonwalked out.  
Sans chuckled. "My bro finds difficulty in the weirdest places," he commented. "Yesterday he got himself stumped trying to 'solve' the horoscope."  
After a silently thoughtful moment, the skeleton shrugged and turned to follow his younger brother.  
Eve, however, remained where she stood, staring quizzically at his retreating back. Ever since she'd first encountered Sans, something seemed… off about him—like he was just going through the motions; reciting lines like his life was part of a play that only he knew about. The recent moment where he practically predicted what Papyrus was going to say, and hastily backpedalled when questioned, only strengthened Eve's suspicions. She'd need to watch him more closely—see what else she could uncover.  
As usual, when she walked into the next area, Sans had vanished without a trace and Papyrus had already sped far out of sight. Here, in this small space with a cliff-face on her left and a cliff-edge on her right, stood a tablet on which sat a plate of spaghetti, a microwave, and a note. When she picked up the note, Eve recognized Papyrus' handwriting—it was the same large-script, all-caps look as on the sign attached to the station he'd apparently built. Now that she considered it, the skeleton's handwriting had multiple similarities to the font from which he got his name.  
'HUMAN!! PLEASE ENJOY THIS SPAGETTI!!  
(LITTLE DO YOU KNOW, THIS SPAGHETTI IS A TRAP . . . DESIGNED TO ENTICE YOU!! YOU'LL BE SO BUSY EATING THAT YOU WON'T REALIZE YOU AREN'T PROGRESSING!! THOROUGHLY JAPED BY THE GREAT PAPYRUS!!)  
NYEH HEH HEH,  
PAPYRUS'  
Eve snorted a laugh, facepalming. _'What a total dork… He clearly has zero experience at this whole 'capturing a human' thing. You don't list your entire plan on a note addressed to the victim. And besides,'_ she added, glancing to the intended 'trap', _'It's frozen to the table, and the microwave isn't even powered, anyway. He really didn't plan this well.'_  
Shaking her head with a smile, she moved along.  
As she walked into a clearing with a few of the same trees she'd seen throughout the region scattered sparsely across the landscape, she spotted a sign to her left:  
'Warning: Dog Marriage'  
The halfa tilted her head with a confused frown.  
"Um… Okay..?"  
Figuring that she'd probably figure out later what that meant, she continued down the right-hand branch of the clearing, since the one ahead of her seemed a dead-end. As she walked, she noticed that her path was barred by a line of gleaming spikes located just around the bend. Suddenly, her foot stepped into a weirdly textured patch of ground, causing her to stop, lifting her foot and looking down at where she'd stepped. What she'd thought to be real snow seemed in fact to be fake, covering a picture beneath—the clear space where her foot had been revealed a bit of it. With that foot, she shifted the fake snow out of the way, revealing what turned out to be a map with a red 'X' between two rocks in the middle of the dead-end branch of the clearing.  
_'One of Papyrus' puzzles?'_ she wondered. She smiled, amused. _'Most likely.'_  
As she considered just flying over the spikes or walking through them with her intangibility, she sensed a pair of eyes on her back, causing her to look around nervously and quickly change her mind. 'Pretend to be a full human,' Sans had requested, and full humans couldn't fly or walk through things.  
Following the map, she headed back to the other branch. The moment she shifted her foot through the snow between the indicated rocks, she realized that it was more fake snow, this time hiding something with more shape than a map. Bending down, she reached into the snow with one hand and took ahold of what turned out to be a hidden lever. It shifted easily with a small click in response to a flick of her wrist, and standing, she headed back to and through where the spikes had now dropped into their bases, then across a narrow and somewhat rickety wooden bridge.  
Turning to continue on, she froze, watching silently with eyes glowing faintly in apprehension as two axe-wielding figures in black cowled cloaks approached along either side of her. They were each almost a head taller than her, with long white snouts emerging from beneath their hoods and white paws from their sleeves and the lowermost hem of their cloaks.  
"What's that smell? _Where's_ that smell?" one muttered in a masculine voice.  
"If you're a smell," added the other, who sounded more feminine, "identify yoursmellf!"  
Before Eve knew what was going on, the two were rushing about the small section of snowy clearing, sniffing intently before stopping on either side of her—the halfa stiffened, all too aware of the gleaming blades they carried.  
"Hmm," hummed the masculine one, "here's that weird smell…"  
"It is a very weird smell," the feminine agreed. "What should we do?"  
"Well, it's a danger smell…"  
"But it's also a neutral smell…"  
"No, there's enough danger in its smell."  
"Should we follow danger protocol, then?"  
"Yes, I think we should."  
_'Oh, crap.'_  
Not liking the situation, Eve attempted to edge away, but stopped abruptly as she found two axe-heads barring her path.  
"Halt, weird smell!" the two commanded in unison. "You are a danger smell, therefore we must eliminate you!"  
Stepping forward as the halfa stepped back, the pair threw back their hoods, revealing a pair of canine heads with long, floppy ears and large, brown eyes. The masculine one had bushy black eyebrows and a mustache, while the feminine had more prominent eyelashes.  
"Let's kick some human tail!" declared the male canine, causing the female to wonder aloud, "Do humans have tails?"  
Stiffening as the two raised their weapons, Eve dropped to the snow with a startled yelp, the blades whipping over her head.  
"Hang on, hang on, hang on!" she shouted, waving her hands desperately as she jumped to her feet. "I know you're smelling the human in me, but I'm not completely human!"  
Stopping in the middle of raising their axes to strike again, the two stared at her curiously.  
Eve indicated her bi-color Soul.  
"I'm part human and part monster—part ghost to be exact. They call us 'halfas' on the surface—we're really rare but we do happen."  
The male's eyes narrowed, although to Eve's relief he didn't move to strike.  
"Prove it, human."  
Struck by a sudden hesitance, Eve froze.  
Now the female also seemed suspicious.  
"Why do you hesitate, human? Are you _lying_?"  
"No no no, that's not it," Eve denied quickly. "It's just, on the surface, humans kinda hate my kind. You know," she wiggled her fingers spookily, "Wooo, spoopy, moaning and rattling chains in your attic~ Which is obviously just dumb," she added, returning to her normal voice, "but it is true that ghosts are especially dangerous where I come from. My friend Danny Phantom is a ghost-fighting superhero, but you should see the reception _he_ used to get. So, uh, yeah—with that in mind, I don't really like revealing my other half to strangers. Never know how they might respond." She shrugged with a wry grin. "Even here, where monsters are the norm, I'm nervous out of habit. Just gotta get over myself, I guess. But anyway…"  
With a grin, she turned intangible and dove underground, emerging behind the pair a moment later to float at head-height, lying on her stomach in midair with her knees bent and hands supporting her chin.  
"Does this confirm my claims?" she questioned as the two spun around in surprise.  
"My stars, she's right," the male one gasped. "No human could do _that_."  
"Humans can be monsters, too?" the female whispered incredulously, laying a paw on her chest. "A new world has been opened for us…"  
"Thank you, weird human," the male thanked Eve, who saluted to him with a grin.  
Still seeming a bit starstruck, the two turned and walked back the way Eve had come, while Eve set her feet back on the ground and walked in the opposite direction.  
Past a small collection of pine trees, she found an odd H-shaped puzzle with blue Xs inside the arms of the H, a button set in the snow to the puzzle's left, and a wooden sign stuck in the ground to its right—beyond it stood, as usual, a row of gleaming spikes.  
Walking alongside, she read the sign:  
'GREETINGS, HUMAN!! IF YOU HAVE GOTTEN THIS FAR, I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, BET THAT YOU ARE COMPLETELY STUMPED BY THIS MAGNIFICENT PUZZLE!! THEREFORE!! I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, WILL GIVE YOU A LITTLE HINT!! THIS PUZZLE INVOLVES TURNING 'X'S INTO 'O'S!! GOOD LUCK!!  
NYEH HEH HEH,  
PAPYRUS'  
_''Xs into Os', huh?'_ Eve mused, looking around. _'Maybe that button will do the trick.'_  
Stepping over the frozen lumps of snow that made up the H's crossbar, she stepped on the button.  
Nothing happened.  
She stepped on it again.  
Nothing happened.  
The halfa released a frustrated growl, stepping back.  
_'Okay, unless there's another hidden lever around here, I have no idea what to do.'_  
At that moment, however, she looked down and realized that in stepping back, she'd stepped on one of the Xs, and it had turned into a lime-green O.  
Her mouth mimicked the letter's shape for a moment. Grinning triumphantly, she stepped on the other X, then back onto the button—with a soft rumbling of gears, the spikes dropped into the ground, revealing the lanky, costumed figure standing behind them.  
Startled by the sound, Papyrus spun around and caught sight of Eve.  
"Human!" he cried out, surprised and a little annoyed. "How did you- Hey!" he interrupted himself, noticing that she was still standing on the crossbar of the H. "Don't break the puzzle!"  
"Uh…" Eve glanced down to the lumps of snow under her feet, then back to Papyrus. "These are like rocks. I don't think the sheer force of my weight can break them."  
Papyrus huffed. "Well, alright, if you're sure…" Suddenly, he brightened up. "But anyway, is there any left for me?"  
_'Any what- oh.'_  
Eve shrugged.  
"Well, yeah. All of it. It was frozen to the table—there was no way I could've eaten it."  
Papyrus looked crestfallen.  
"Oh. Oopsie."  
He soon got over the disappointment, however.  
"Anyway, come along, human! The next puzzle awaits!"  
Eve hurried after him as he dashed down the path beyond the H-shaped puzzle to one that looked like a simple maze, the low walls built of frozen snow rocks and the spaces in between lined with more blue Xs.  
Papyrus paused, seeming hesitant, as Eve walked up to the puzzle.  
"Human!" he shouted suddenly, making her jump. "Um…" Now, however, he sounded awkward. "You were taking quite a while, so I… um… decided to rearrange the snow into the shape of my face—you know, since that would greatly improve it! But the snow froze to the ground before I was done, and now the solution is different! As usual, my lazy brother isn't here to help us," he huffed, "so we'll just have to figure out a way through on our own."  
Eve nodded her understanding and stepped up to the puzzle.  
It took a few tries, during which Eve learned that if she stepped on one of the Os, which were now red instead of green, it would turn into a lime-green triangle and be stuck as that until she pressed the button and reset the puzzle. At one point the impatient teen considered doing what she'd done with the other puzzle and just step over the snow rocks, but that would be cheating—if she won this puzzle, she wanted to do it right.  
"Wowie!" Papyrus exclaimed when she finally figured it out. "Such dedication! I'm impressed, human! You must care about puzzles as much as I do! Come along now—on to the next! With your skill, you might find it too easy!"  
With his characteristic nasally laugh, he darted around the puzzle and down the following path.  
Crossing through the now-complete puzzle, Eve looked away for only a moment, yet when she looked back, Sans was standing there on the other side of where the spike-wall had been.  
"Sorry I'm late," he greeted her with a wink. "I would've helped out, but, you know, those darn spikes…" He gestured to where they'd just been.  
Eve rolled her eyes.  
"Somehow I doubt that would've been a real problem."  
Sans chuckled.  
“How so? It’s not like I can _teleport_ or anything…”  
Eve quirked an eyebrow at him with a grin.  
“Is that so?”  
Walking after Papyrus, she soon found herself in a clearing with a pattern on the ground that looked like a checkerboard in various shades of gray instead of only black and white or red. Sans—who she was certain had been behind her only a moment ago—and Papyrus stood opposite her.  
"Hey, look!" Papyrus cried upon spotting her. "It's the human!" Addressing her directly, he continued, "You're going to love this puzzle! It was made by the great Dr. Alphys! See, when I flip this switch," he gestured to the boxy machine beside him, "these tiles will change color! The color of each tile determines the effect!" With that declaration, he rattled off a list of functions: "Red tiles are impassable! Yellow tiles are electrified! Green tiles sound an alarm, which means you have to fight a monster! Orange tiles make you smell like oranges! Blue tiles are water! You may swim in them, but if you smell like oranges, the piranhas will bite you! Also, if a blue tile is next to a yellow one, the water will zap you! Purple tiles are slippery soap tiles! They will make you slide to the next tile! However, the soap smells like lemons, which the piranhas don't like, so blue and purple tiles next to each other are fine! Finally, pink tiles have no effect at all—you can walk on them all you like! There—that's the puzzle! Do you understand how to work it now?"  
Eve's head reeled from all the information she'd just had to take in, but she nodded anyway.  
_'I'll remember as I go, I'm sure.'_  
"Excellent!" Papyrus cheered. "However, there is one more thing you must know—the puzzle is completely random! Not even I know what the answer will be!"  
Eve pursed her lips.  
_'Well, shoot, that could be bad. What if I end up with a row of reds or something?'_ She shrugged to herself. _'Oh well—whatever happens happens.'_  
Turning to the machine, Papyrus flipped the lever and the tiles turned to bright colors, flashing between them faster and faster until…  
It stopped as a straight path of pink with red on either side.  
Eve couldn't restrain her incredulous laughter as a mortified Papyrus spun slowly away from the machine and down the path beyond. Sans was keeping a straight face—well, as straight as someone with a permanent smile could keep their face—but Eve noticed as she approached him that his shoulders were shaking in restrained laughter.  
As she passed him, she overheard him murmur, "That never gets old…"  
Stopping, she turned back to him, one eyebrow raised in confusion.  
"Wait, what?"  
"Yeah, that puzzle's supposed to be randomized, but it actually hasn't worked right since he first got it," he explained. He seemed casual, but Eve took note of the momentary stiffening of his shoulders in response to her query. Deciding not to comment, she shrugged and headed after Papyrus.  
Beyond the color tiles puzzle, Eve discovered an exceedingly odd sight. In the snowy clearing, in the middle of which stood a single guard station, stood several oddly shaped snow sculptures, some almost gravity-defying in their design. Upon closer examination, she realized that the long, tubular structures were in fact elongated necks, some of which bearing canine heads with tiny, pointed ears, beady black eyes, and goofy smiles turning up their round muzzles. More of these silly heads lay about the clearing, seeming to have fallen off of other, headless necks.  
Staring perplexed and vaguely disturbed at the sculptures, Eve deliberately walked along the path through the middle of the clearing. As she crossed the space, she noticed a humanoid monster similar in appearance to a bipedal deer standing near the empty station, her hands—or hooves, Eve wasn't sure—hidden in the pockets of her button-down coat.  
"What happened here?" the teen asked her, catching the monster's attention.  
The deerlike's big, chocolate-brown eyes flicked to her for a moment, then back to the snow sculptures, releasing a quiet sigh.  
"One of the Lesser Dogs happened," she explained, her voice soft and lilting. "For about three years the dog had been coming here—he fancied himself an artist, you see. But he'd just stand there in front of that station and stare at the snow with that blank grin common to all of them." She lifted her narrow shoulders in a shrug. "I suppose something must've clicked eventually, because a week or so back, he came here and straightaway started building." She pursed her narrow black lips. "It was almost quite sad."  
Eve frowned. "Why?"  
"Because when a Lesser Dog gets excited, its neck begins to lengthen. As he sculpted, the one that was here just kept getting more and more excited, and his neck kept growing and growing… I was afraid he was going to hit his head on the cavern ceiling. Fortunately, something must've distracted him because he went and scampered off. I suppose his neck must've shrunk again by now, but he hasn't come back since."  
Okay, that was probably the most bizarre thing that Eve had ever heard of, even for this weird underground civilization with its talking flowers and rocks and the like. Surely it showed on her face, but the deerlike didn't seem to notice or care.  
Seeing that she was no longer interested in conversation, Eve moved along across a narrow land-bridge to the icy expanse beyond. With the blue X's placed at regular intervals on clear patches amid the ice and a button visible at the far end, it bore a noticeable resemblance to the maze-like puzzle from earlier. Branching off to the right, a narrow land-bridge led to an area beyond, hidden in the slate-needled pine trees native to the region. Intrigued by that, Eve left the puzzle for the moment and headed down that path.  
At its end, she found a small, snowy clearing, dropping into darkness on every side. In the center of the clearing, a space had been cleared for two snow sculptures—or rather, one snow sculpture and a lump. As she walked around to view it from the front, Eve could've laughed aloud—the sculpture was a bust from the waist up of an exceedingly muscular Papyrus, while the lump beside it, tiny in comparison, had a simple 'sans' written on it in marker, the red ink somehow adhering cleanly to the snow.  
Shaking her head with a grin, the halfa turned and headed back to the ice patch puzzle.  
"Okay," she muttered to herself. "If this is like the other Xs to Os puzzles, all I need to do is step on each of them once and only once, then on that button at the end." Craning her neck, she charted each X in relation to the others and quickly realized that it wasn't as complicated as it looked, only requiring that she slide across to each in an inward, squarish spiral.  
Once she had done so, a narrow, icy bridge extended through the gap between the giant trees the moment she hit the button. Nervous about the drop into black shadows on either side, she nonetheless propelled herself off of the button's patch of ground and slid across the bridge, the narrow, charcoal-hued trees whipping by on either side and powdery white snow flaking softly onto her auburn head.  
When she reached the other side, she dusted the snow off of herself and looked around. The icy path had opened into a snow-laden strip of land with a path slanting downward to the right. The area itself was devoid of trees but did have several smallish mounds of snow scattered randomly about with a tiny wooden doghouse in the very center. In the distance beyond the area, Eve could see a long, narrow bridge leading into a town.  
As she walked across the strip, she noticed a golden glint from one of the mounds to the far left—investigating, she found thirty gold coins half-buried in the snow.  
“That’ll come in handy,” she noted, adding the coins to the stash in her bag and continuing on.  
As she approached the path leading to the bridge, the mound of snow standing in front of the path shivered violently. The teen stiffened warily, her eyes lighting up with energy as she took a step back. The snow poff shook again, then a white snout emerged from it, followed by a furry head with pointed ears and beady black eyes. Looking up at her, the puppy panted excitedly, its mouth parting in a doggy grin with tongue lolling. Relieved, Eve relaxed, resting her hands on her knees and crouching down closer to the puppy’s height.  
“Aww, hey there, little… guy..?”  
Even as she spoke, the mound bulged upward, rising into an armored, spear-wielding figure nearly twice Eve’s height with the puppy’s cute face at the helm while the halfa watched in shocked disbelief, her eyes growing wider as the figure grew taller.  
Standing up straight, she took a step back, realizing from the odd, partially disembodied sensation and the red glow from her chest that her Soul had flashed into visibility.  
The Greater Dog barked twice, excitedly, and swung its spear at her. With a yelp, the halfa dropped to the ground, narrowly avoiding the attack as the flashing shaft swung overhead. On instinct her raised hand lit up with ghostly fire but she restrained herself—it was just a silly dog; she didn’t need to fight back. Recalling something she had seen, she scooped up a handful of snow, patting it into a ball as she stood.  
“Hey there, puppy,” she crooned, waving the ball—Greater Dog’s eyes sparkled as it dropped to all fours, dropping the spear in the process. “You wanna play? Huh? You wanna play? Go fetch!”  
With that, she lobbed the snowball over the dog’s head. Barking excitedly, it dove over the edge of the cliff after it and Eve clapped her hands over her mouth—she hadn’t meant that to happen. A moment later, however, the dog scrabbled back up the rock, seeming confused but none the worse for wear.  
“Um, okay…” Forming another snowball, she threw it toward the doghouse. “Go fetch!”  
Once again the dog bounded after the ball—only to stop short when it splatted against the wooden structure. Looking around in confusion, it lighted on a snow poff and carried it to Eve, dropping it at her feet and sitting back on its haunches to watch her eagerly.  
Eve stared nonplussed at the snow poff, then scooped a snowball out of it and threw it over the cliff again with the gleeful canine right behind. This time it took the dog a bit longer to scramble its way up the cliff-face, panting heavily as it lumbered to Eve and flopped on top of her, knocking the girl to the ground with a startled outcry. Crossing her legs with some difficulty, she stared in apprehension at the massive animal in her lap. Hesitantly she rested her hand on its head—when it didn’t respond with hostility, she cautiously scratched it behind the ears. The dog melted into her lap, panting happily. With growing certainty, Eve continued petting the dog’s soft, thick fur. After a while, the dog stood up suddenly, shook itself off, and jumped out of the armor, revealing that the actual canine was barely the size of a German shepherd. It panted, barked happily, and licked her face before jumping back into the armor and walking away.  
Getting to her feet, Eve wiped the doggy slobber off of her face with her jacket and continued to the bridge ahead.  
The narrow wooden bridge swung precariously as she stepped onto it, making the nervous teen grab onto the ropes for support, peering apprehensively at the forest far below. Cautiously the halfa continued along.  
When she was halfway to the other side, she looked up and there stood Papyrus with Sans beside him.  
“Human!” he shouted, puffing out his chest and setting his gloved hands decisively on his hips. “Here waits your final and most dangerous challenge! It is called… The Gauntlet of Deadly Terror!”  
With that declaration, suddenly Eve faced a dangerous variety of weapons aimed at her from all angles… and a dog on a rope for some reason. She stiffened, eyes flashing aqua-green in response to the impending danger. Sans may have asked her to pretend to be a full human, but if her life was on the line here, she would not hesitate to break that promise—she could apologize to him later if he really got bent out of shape over it.  
“When I give the word,” Papyrus continued, “the gauntlet will fully activate! Cannons will fire! Spikes will swing! Blades will slice! Your chances of victory are far slimmer than they ever have been!”  
_’Oh crap.’_  
“Get ready, human!” Papyrus declared, “because- I- am- going- to activate it!!”  
Eve took a step back, prepared to activate her ghostly alias the moment anything twitched.  
Nothing happened.  
After what felt like an age, Sans glanced to Papyrus questioningly.  
“That, uh, doesn’t look very activated.”  
Papyrus seemed to bluster for a moment.  
“W-Well just you watch! I’m going to activate it right now!”  
Still, nothing happened.  
“Still doesn’t look very activated, bro,” Sans remarked. “What’s the holdup?”  
“W-Well, um, I think that this puzzle… might be too easy for the human,” Papyrus admitted. “Besides, it’s far too direct—no class whatsoever! I am a skeleton with standards, and I will not allow for a puzzle that does not meet them! So, I am not going to use this one after all!”  
With that declaration, the weapons receded into their hiding places, allowing Eve to relax. Looking back to Papyrus, she noticed his relieved sigh as he turned away. Turning back and noticing that she was staring at him, Papyrus blustered, “What are you looking at?! This was a decisive victory for the Great Papyrus! Nyeh! Heh! ...Heh!”  
With that overly confident announcement, he spun on his heel and strode into the town directly beyond.  
Completing her crossing of the bridge, Eve was thankful to have her feet on solid ground again.  
“Hey, you’d better watch yourself from here,” Sans warned her. “I don’t know what my brother’s gonna do next, so be sure you’re familiar with blue attacks.”  
Eve cast him a glare.  
“Yeah, sure.”  
Sans quirked an eyebrow at her.  
“What’s that look for?”  
“What the heck is your problem?!” the halfa shouted suddenly, whirling on him—the skeleton stiffened, his eyelights flickering out of existence for a moment. “Why do you keep goading him on?! It’s like you want to see me dead!”  
Sans’ laugh sounded slightly forced.  
“What’re you talkin’ about, kiddo? I’m just encouraging him.”  
“Oh, don’t give me that crap,” the halfa snapped. “I know what passive-aggressive hostility looks like—I’ve experienced it before. Cut the bull and give it to me straight—why are you doing these things?”  
Sans’ suddenly intense eyelights locked onto her eyes—Eve almost took a step back at the anger hidden behind his frozen grin.  
“You want the truth?” he questioned, his voice dropped to almost a growl. “Here’s the truth—you’re a human and I don’t trust you.”  
Eve crossed her arms pugnaciously.  
“Well that’s a little racist, don’t you think?”  
Sans chuckled mirthlessly.  
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. But really, all that matters is that I don’t know what you want, but just know that if you make me nervous, you’re not gonna like what happens next.”  
Eve glimpsed his left eyesocket flare a brilliant electric-blue before the skeleton vanished in a blue-edged flash and a puff of sparks—apparently he no longer saw any need to conceal the teleportation ability that Eve had already deduced.  
The halfa released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Whoever Sans really was, he wasn’t the carefree comedian she had originally believed him to be—her subconscious discomfort about him had been more justified than she suspected, it seemed. She would be well-advised to step carefully, especially while he still perceived her as a potential threat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, this could be bad. Look out, Eve - you ain't got a friend in Sans.


End file.
